October 14, 2013
Will Magazines Become E-Catalogs?
Last week, MasterCard announced a partnership with Condé Nast that will allow readers of digital magazines to instantly buy items in articles or ads without leaving the page of their tablet.
Wired is the first publication to offer ShopThis, which is tied to MasterCard’s MasterPass digital wallet. Readers exploring the pages of Wired’s November tablet edition on an iPad tap a shopping cart icon on the page to put an item aside for purchase. They can also easily see product details and selection options (size, color, etc.). If the reader chooses to buy, they can check out without leaving the magazine page. As the first official retail partner, Rakuten.com, the Japanese e-commerce giant that creates digital stores for retailers and acquired buy.com in 2010, fulfills the orders.
"Today’s consumer should not have to think about the shopping process," said Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer for MasterCard, in a statement. "When they see what they want, they should be able to get it, as quickly as possible. ShopThis with MasterPass turns this into a reality — you see a product, click to put it in your shopping cart, and check out — simply and safely."
![[Image: ShopThis]](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZpZXdCb3g9IjAgMCAxIDEiIHdpZHRoPSIxIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjEiIGRhdGEtdT0iJTJGcHVibGljJTJGaW1hZ2VzJTJGZGlzY3Vzc2lvbnMlMkYxNzA4NCUyRnNob3B0aGlzLXN0aWxsLmpwZyIgZGF0YS13PSIxIiBkYXRhLWg9IjEiIGRhdGEtYmlwPSIiPjwvc3ZnPg==)
Allure and Glamour, two other Condé Nast publications have also experimented with mobile commerce, but ShopThis is said to offer more of a seamless experience between commerce and content.
The New York Times likened ShopThis to a number of other digitally-driven, instant-buy emerging technologies. Another example is Peapod’s upgraded app, which now enables customers to restock basics by scanning barcodes at home.
Speaking to the Times, Mr. Lyons said the click-through shopping technology is "digitally agnostic" and could potentially work across many digital mediums.
"There is no reason why ShopThis couldn’t be rolled out when watching a movie or video," said Mr. Lyons said. "You see an actor who has a nice shirt on, you activate ShopThis. This is an example of incubation where we move quietly, test, learn, iterate."
- WIRED 1st to Pilot ‘In Content Purchasing’ via MasterCard’s ShopThis – MasterCard
- For Shoppers, Next Level of Instant Gratification – The New York Times (tiered sub.)
- Wired makes its digital articles shop-able with technology from MasterCard – Internet Retailer
- Condé Nast’s Wired tests tablet shopping to build ecommerce strategy – Mobile Commerce Daily
- Will Peapod Drive Sales With Its Mobile Grocery Store? – RetailWire
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Will the practice of marrying magazines with e-commerce become widespread in the future? What are the implications for retailers?
Poll
I think it will be as this has been a goal of eCommerce for 10+ years. It’s just been more challenging to implement than originally envisioned. And the story acknowledges there are multiple players trying to enable this, “The New York Times likened ShopThis to a number of other digitally-driven, instant-buy emerging technologies.”
In terms of implications for retailers, this expands their online footprint so it should be a net positive, but again implementing this could prove to be challenging. It will be interesting to see how ShopThis and other solutions are adopted.
This would be the ultimate in frictionless commerce, akin to the television set IBM was working on 15 years ago that would automatically set up a purchase from QVC if the viewer said “buy it.”
If this catches on, watch for a scramble as retailers respond….
Direct to consumer advertising and instant purchase linked in a digital format? What’s not to like? Unless you are an online aggregating site….
Manufacturers as prominent as P&G have been toying with direct-to-consumer purchase and delivery for years. This is definitely only one of many acorns to be planted – and most won’t grow – but someday we will be “purchasing” regularly without even bothering to open a retail site, much less go to a brick & mortar outlet.
I see the reverse – e-commerce catalogs becoming magazines.
This article fails to mention Wired’s first venture into marrying editorial and marketing.
Does anyone remember “The Cat”? It was a device Wired would send you. The idea was that you scanned a UPC in an ad with “The Cat” and created a digital order. It didn’t work, perhaps because it required proprietary technology and/or that you be a Wired reader. The idea was to grow it into a general utility but it never got that far.
There are similar design flaws with this model since it is limited to MasterCard purchases in an era when so many people chase points on other cards.
The real danger here is that it will work.
Once publishers realize that there’s a market here the rush will be to create more and more effective tie-in editorial.
The likely end result?
The non-commercial content of media will become even more diluted – assuming that is still possible and the population will become even less adroit at separating marketing messaging from news – assuming that is still possible.
If it does in fact work, retailers may want to start thinking about going into the publishing business. By that time it shouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.
I believe that ShopThis will allow brands disintermediate the retailer. In effect, ShopThis enables the editorial context itself to become the retailer. So – from that perspective, magazines are becoming digital malls, just like airports are becoming physical malls. Anywhere there is captive attention, a shopper conversion opportunity may be exploited.
I see the ShopThis capability as simply the next stage in advertising: it is becoming on-demand, instant ordering. The impulse buy will reign supreme.
But, I believe it is more than that too. It is also another nail in the coffin of civic space. The more spaces (both digital and physical) evolve into selling opportunities, the more we will see ourselves as consumers, not citizens.
This is the future! Content providers are trying to stay relevant and add e-commerce to increase readership and engagement. On the flip side, e-commerce is looking to add content and drive more people to sites and provide contextual relevance. When I’m reading Wired and see the latest gadget, of course I should be able to click now and buy it. I assume that the readers of Allure want the same thing and maybe expect more in the way of customized recommendations based on skin type, etc.
It was only a matter of time for this to become a reality. I remember when Peapod started in around 1989 in Chicago, they talked of these kinds of capabilities. I worked in some of the stores they used for picking orders.
This is already becoming widespread, especially outside the US. This is expanded reach for both retailers and CPG brands alike. The easier it is to shop, the more shopping consumers will do. No more complicated than that.
Still don’t understand why this hasn’t happened with TV yet.
Full disclosure: I worked on a start-up with a lot of similarities to this so I have asked and answered many of the questions that would drive the success or failure of this strategy.
It has a lot of potential and of course, a lot rides on Rakuten’s ability to deliver, but let’s not totally forget brand loyalty. Yes, believe it or not, loyalty does still exist. It’s one thing to have a magazine curate and editorialize the content, but it’s still another thing for the magazine to dictate where I will buy my Elie Tahari jacket. I love my Bloomingdale’s points!
So could I fall in love with Rakuten’s points? Perhaps. Does this now mean that every retailer has to publish a magazine? OOhhh, I don’t think so. That is the same argument as whether every retailer needs to have their own app.
What is super cool for the publishing industry is that this strategy now allows them to give instant gratification to their readers. Perhaps if that instant gratification provides a marketplace to select the brand to buy from, like Amazon, eBay? Hmmm, now that would be interesting….
The only reason you couldn’t buy directly from a magazine in the past is because paper isn’t clickable. Direct response is an obvious and valuable extension to every advertising medium (in fact to all media, period).
Put another way, technology should be used to shorten the path to purchase, and to eliminate steps between the moment a person thinks they might want to buy something and the moment they own it. Each step that is removed has huge payoff…just think about direct response infomercials, Amazon’s Instant Buy button, and clickable online ads.
This model goes back to the dawn of broadcast and is inevitable as publishers (smartly) look to develop new and improved business models. At the same time, it makes publishers vulnerable to brands and their own content models, which for some brands with highly engaged customers will allow them to not only disintermediate retailers, but ultimately do the same with publishers.
Amen to Ryan’s comment. I endorsed it only once, because I couldn’t figure out a way to do it 100 times. People will love this and it’ll take off big-time. So much for that question. But the underlying societal problem we have will only get far worse. TV news is already advertiser-driven (not to mention personality-opinion-driven). This will further fog the line between advertising and editorial in magazines. Where in the hell are we as a society going to be able to go for “truth” uninfluenced by advertisers and big money? It’s rare to find it now, but looks like in the future it’ll be practically impossible. Sic transit gloria media.
Today’s consumers are addicted to their “small screens.” They are increasingly turning to interactive media that they can consume anytime and everywhere. Successful magazines and print media will increasingly become digital and interactive.
There is little doubt that consumers will click to interact and see more from digital ads in digital magazines, TV or even movies. Will they click for instant purchase after the “fad wears off”?
The consumer experience goes well beyond the click to purchase. Consumers today expect seamless, worry free purchase experience with easy returns (aka the Amazon experience). If the instant purchase experience from digital magazines does not meet these “standards,” the fad will quickly fade.
Magazines will definitely become more intertwined with e-commerce, and should find the most seamless and frictionless way to get from browse to buy. I believe this won’t just apply to digital magazines, which are still emerging. The traditional print magazines can benefit from making e-commerce more seamless by leveraging some of the compelling augmented reality apps. These new mobile apps move beyond the struggling QR code and into image-based recognition.
Also, as brands become more adept at media creation, we’ll see more brand-centric magazines which combine editorial, commerce, and social.
Innovation continues to change and redefine the publishing industry. As publications go electronic, it makes sense to link to other sites, products, services, etc. Don’t fight it. It’s here. Embrace it. Give the customers what they want; convenience and confidence.
In stunning fashion, the rise of the tablet is coinciding with a mini-renaissance for the magazine industry. The migration from inert cellulose to interactive e-paper has huge implications for the periodicals that survive. This is true across formats, I think, not just fashion and tech, but also for trade magazines and scholarly journals who grasp the opportunity.
On the B2B side, every page of every e-zine becomes its own instant “bingo card.” (Remember those – the blow-in cards we used to request literature from print advertisers?) Now a single tap can request a sample, initiate a sales call, download a spec sheet, or trigger a recorded webinar.
In the scholarly world, abstracts can link to searchable full-text and detailed author bios, with further links to data sets, high-resolution imagery, simulations and other enhancements. Moderated discussions can be attached and references can be live links.
Back to consumer magazines: Here we have interactive static ads that can open to HD video on demand; retrieve detailed product information; link to social media; and directly trigger the purchase process. MasterCard’s ShopThis is only an early iteration. I would anticipate bonus subscription extensions for frequent purchasers and the ability to store personal preferences with each magazine account so that ads become more personally relevant.
Paper may be on its way out, but e-zines and e-papers are the new age of print. If you still doubt this, ask Mr. Bezos again why he thought buying the Washington Post was a good idea.
(PS to Ryan: I too remember the “Cat” and I still might have one in a box of old cables and spare parts in the back of my office closet. What do you think it might fetch on eBay?)
Wired magazine is exemplary at embracing disruptive technologies and introducing them to their loyal readers, who skew quite nicely for the task.
I think the launch of ShopThis in the October issue of Wired is brilliant. The opportunity to buy through ShopThis will be limited to a dozen products in the very enticing “Gadget Lab” section and also in the holiday gift guide, which is a super smart move given holiday shopping time is shortchanged this year.
This is a beta test of sorts and should bode well for ShopThis, in part due to its novelty and quite simply to sheer convenience.
I do see click through shopping technology working across several digital platforms over the coming years and it will serve retailers well to fine tune their omni-channel retailing and use predictive anaytics to know what their customers want, before their customers even know it. Large retailer labs are already deep at work on both fronts.
Publishers live and die on their ability to create desire. This adds a metric that should excite and then scare them. Accountability will be a new concept to most publishers.
Absolutely! With the advances in Augmented Reality another technological means to try before buying, magazines become the perfect, low-cost way to shop. Now companies need to ensure safety and security is provided. This is only one more argument for the in-store shopping experience, in competition, to provide a unique point of difference.
Yes, it is inevitable as it reduces the time from impulse to transaction. As connected as we have become, it causes unnecessary friction to have someone need to switch from viewing a product in a magazine to having to look for it online (especially if it’s an obscure item).
Retailers can adopt a similar model of advertising and either post an ad with a link to their site, or execute a co-promotion with a brand in which the link goes to the retailer’s site. This model lends itself well to direct sales to the manufacturer and as such, it is one in which retailers will have to a) figure out which model works best for them and b) which product categories are the most practical and profitable for them to address. Much like any new form of promotion, retailers will have to experiment and review to find optimal strategies
Retailers are under mounting pressure to provide a seamless, unified experience across all digital channels and customer touchpoints. I think e-catalogs will carve out a greater niche as the use of tablets continues to grow and people come to expect a more interactive digital shopping customer experience. E-catalogs can offer the perfect ‘lean-back’ browsing experience – coupling this inspirational video and live data driven content makes for a very powerful shopping experience. We’ve already seen a transcendent movement in retail wherein consumers expect a nearly identical experience online compared to in-store shopping.
More Discussions
Is Meta Committing to Retail via Meta Lab Stores, or Are Other Goals More Important?
Is Meta playing in retail, actually committing to retail, or looking for more data?Aerie Recruits Pamela Anderson To Highlight No-AI Models Promise
American Eagle’s Aerie banner has recruited former “Baywatch” star Pamela Anderson to broadcast the lifestyle brand’s…How Timely Is the Planned Lowe’s Website Renovation Focusing on Personalization?
Is Lowe’s being timely with its website reno, and is it right to be placed as…
I think it will be as this has been a goal of eCommerce for 10+ years. It’s just been more challenging to implement than originally envisioned. And the story acknowledges there are multiple players trying to enable this, “The New York Times likened ShopThis to a number of other digitally-driven, instant-buy emerging technologies.”
In terms of implications for retailers, this expands their online footprint so it should be a net positive, but again implementing this could prove to be challenging. It will be interesting to see how ShopThis and other solutions are adopted.
This would be the ultimate in frictionless commerce, akin to the television set IBM was working on 15 years ago that would automatically set up a purchase from QVC if the viewer said “buy it.”
If this catches on, watch for a scramble as retailers respond….
Direct to consumer advertising and instant purchase linked in a digital format? What’s not to like? Unless you are an online aggregating site….
Manufacturers as prominent as P&G have been toying with direct-to-consumer purchase and delivery for years. This is definitely only one of many acorns to be planted – and most won’t grow – but someday we will be “purchasing” regularly without even bothering to open a retail site, much less go to a brick & mortar outlet.
I see the reverse – e-commerce catalogs becoming magazines.
This article fails to mention Wired’s first venture into marrying editorial and marketing.
Does anyone remember “The Cat”? It was a device Wired would send you. The idea was that you scanned a UPC in an ad with “The Cat” and created a digital order. It didn’t work, perhaps because it required proprietary technology and/or that you be a Wired reader. The idea was to grow it into a general utility but it never got that far.
There are similar design flaws with this model since it is limited to MasterCard purchases in an era when so many people chase points on other cards.
The real danger here is that it will work.
Once publishers realize that there’s a market here the rush will be to create more and more effective tie-in editorial.
The likely end result?
The non-commercial content of media will become even more diluted – assuming that is still possible and the population will become even less adroit at separating marketing messaging from news – assuming that is still possible.
If it does in fact work, retailers may want to start thinking about going into the publishing business. By that time it shouldn’t be much of a stretch at all.
I believe that ShopThis will allow brands disintermediate the retailer. In effect, ShopThis enables the editorial context itself to become the retailer. So – from that perspective, magazines are becoming digital malls, just like airports are becoming physical malls. Anywhere there is captive attention, a shopper conversion opportunity may be exploited.
I see the ShopThis capability as simply the next stage in advertising: it is becoming on-demand, instant ordering. The impulse buy will reign supreme.
But, I believe it is more than that too. It is also another nail in the coffin of civic space. The more spaces (both digital and physical) evolve into selling opportunities, the more we will see ourselves as consumers, not citizens.
This is the future! Content providers are trying to stay relevant and add e-commerce to increase readership and engagement. On the flip side, e-commerce is looking to add content and drive more people to sites and provide contextual relevance. When I’m reading Wired and see the latest gadget, of course I should be able to click now and buy it. I assume that the readers of Allure want the same thing and maybe expect more in the way of customized recommendations based on skin type, etc.
It was only a matter of time for this to become a reality. I remember when Peapod started in around 1989 in Chicago, they talked of these kinds of capabilities. I worked in some of the stores they used for picking orders.
This is already becoming widespread, especially outside the US. This is expanded reach for both retailers and CPG brands alike. The easier it is to shop, the more shopping consumers will do. No more complicated than that.
Still don’t understand why this hasn’t happened with TV yet.
Full disclosure: I worked on a start-up with a lot of similarities to this so I have asked and answered many of the questions that would drive the success or failure of this strategy.
It has a lot of potential and of course, a lot rides on Rakuten’s ability to deliver, but let’s not totally forget brand loyalty. Yes, believe it or not, loyalty does still exist. It’s one thing to have a magazine curate and editorialize the content, but it’s still another thing for the magazine to dictate where I will buy my Elie Tahari jacket. I love my Bloomingdale’s points!
So could I fall in love with Rakuten’s points? Perhaps. Does this now mean that every retailer has to publish a magazine? OOhhh, I don’t think so. That is the same argument as whether every retailer needs to have their own app.
What is super cool for the publishing industry is that this strategy now allows them to give instant gratification to their readers. Perhaps if that instant gratification provides a marketplace to select the brand to buy from, like Amazon, eBay? Hmmm, now that would be interesting….
The only reason you couldn’t buy directly from a magazine in the past is because paper isn’t clickable. Direct response is an obvious and valuable extension to every advertising medium (in fact to all media, period).
Put another way, technology should be used to shorten the path to purchase, and to eliminate steps between the moment a person thinks they might want to buy something and the moment they own it. Each step that is removed has huge payoff…just think about direct response infomercials, Amazon’s Instant Buy button, and clickable online ads.
This model goes back to the dawn of broadcast and is inevitable as publishers (smartly) look to develop new and improved business models. At the same time, it makes publishers vulnerable to brands and their own content models, which for some brands with highly engaged customers will allow them to not only disintermediate retailers, but ultimately do the same with publishers.
Amen to Ryan’s comment. I endorsed it only once, because I couldn’t figure out a way to do it 100 times. People will love this and it’ll take off big-time. So much for that question. But the underlying societal problem we have will only get far worse. TV news is already advertiser-driven (not to mention personality-opinion-driven). This will further fog the line between advertising and editorial in magazines. Where in the hell are we as a society going to be able to go for “truth” uninfluenced by advertisers and big money? It’s rare to find it now, but looks like in the future it’ll be practically impossible. Sic transit gloria media.
Today’s consumers are addicted to their “small screens.” They are increasingly turning to interactive media that they can consume anytime and everywhere. Successful magazines and print media will increasingly become digital and interactive.
There is little doubt that consumers will click to interact and see more from digital ads in digital magazines, TV or even movies. Will they click for instant purchase after the “fad wears off”?
The consumer experience goes well beyond the click to purchase. Consumers today expect seamless, worry free purchase experience with easy returns (aka the Amazon experience). If the instant purchase experience from digital magazines does not meet these “standards,” the fad will quickly fade.
Magazines will definitely become more intertwined with e-commerce, and should find the most seamless and frictionless way to get from browse to buy. I believe this won’t just apply to digital magazines, which are still emerging. The traditional print magazines can benefit from making e-commerce more seamless by leveraging some of the compelling augmented reality apps. These new mobile apps move beyond the struggling QR code and into image-based recognition.
Also, as brands become more adept at media creation, we’ll see more brand-centric magazines which combine editorial, commerce, and social.
Innovation continues to change and redefine the publishing industry. As publications go electronic, it makes sense to link to other sites, products, services, etc. Don’t fight it. It’s here. Embrace it. Give the customers what they want; convenience and confidence.
In stunning fashion, the rise of the tablet is coinciding with a mini-renaissance for the magazine industry. The migration from inert cellulose to interactive e-paper has huge implications for the periodicals that survive. This is true across formats, I think, not just fashion and tech, but also for trade magazines and scholarly journals who grasp the opportunity.
On the B2B side, every page of every e-zine becomes its own instant “bingo card.” (Remember those – the blow-in cards we used to request literature from print advertisers?) Now a single tap can request a sample, initiate a sales call, download a spec sheet, or trigger a recorded webinar.
In the scholarly world, abstracts can link to searchable full-text and detailed author bios, with further links to data sets, high-resolution imagery, simulations and other enhancements. Moderated discussions can be attached and references can be live links.
Back to consumer magazines: Here we have interactive static ads that can open to HD video on demand; retrieve detailed product information; link to social media; and directly trigger the purchase process. MasterCard’s ShopThis is only an early iteration. I would anticipate bonus subscription extensions for frequent purchasers and the ability to store personal preferences with each magazine account so that ads become more personally relevant.
Paper may be on its way out, but e-zines and e-papers are the new age of print. If you still doubt this, ask Mr. Bezos again why he thought buying the Washington Post was a good idea.
(PS to Ryan: I too remember the “Cat” and I still might have one in a box of old cables and spare parts in the back of my office closet. What do you think it might fetch on eBay?)
Wired magazine is exemplary at embracing disruptive technologies and introducing them to their loyal readers, who skew quite nicely for the task.
I think the launch of ShopThis in the October issue of Wired is brilliant. The opportunity to buy through ShopThis will be limited to a dozen products in the very enticing “Gadget Lab” section and also in the holiday gift guide, which is a super smart move given holiday shopping time is shortchanged this year.
This is a beta test of sorts and should bode well for ShopThis, in part due to its novelty and quite simply to sheer convenience.
I do see click through shopping technology working across several digital platforms over the coming years and it will serve retailers well to fine tune their omni-channel retailing and use predictive anaytics to know what their customers want, before their customers even know it. Large retailer labs are already deep at work on both fronts.
Publishers live and die on their ability to create desire. This adds a metric that should excite and then scare them. Accountability will be a new concept to most publishers.
Absolutely! With the advances in Augmented Reality another technological means to try before buying, magazines become the perfect, low-cost way to shop. Now companies need to ensure safety and security is provided. This is only one more argument for the in-store shopping experience, in competition, to provide a unique point of difference.
Yes, it is inevitable as it reduces the time from impulse to transaction. As connected as we have become, it causes unnecessary friction to have someone need to switch from viewing a product in a magazine to having to look for it online (especially if it’s an obscure item).
Retailers can adopt a similar model of advertising and either post an ad with a link to their site, or execute a co-promotion with a brand in which the link goes to the retailer’s site. This model lends itself well to direct sales to the manufacturer and as such, it is one in which retailers will have to a) figure out which model works best for them and b) which product categories are the most practical and profitable for them to address. Much like any new form of promotion, retailers will have to experiment and review to find optimal strategies
Retailers are under mounting pressure to provide a seamless, unified experience across all digital channels and customer touchpoints. I think e-catalogs will carve out a greater niche as the use of tablets continues to grow and people come to expect a more interactive digital shopping customer experience. E-catalogs can offer the perfect ‘lean-back’ browsing experience – coupling this inspirational video and live data driven content makes for a very powerful shopping experience. We’ve already seen a transcendent movement in retail wherein consumers expect a nearly identical experience online compared to in-store shopping.