Media companies have been looking for new revenue sources for most of 2008/9 as advertising revenue steeply declined. The answer seems that there will be multiple sources although the bulk of the focus has been on paid content of one form or another. Although another idea, ecommerce, is something that we at Optaros have been suggesting to our media clients for most of 2009, is gaining some traction.

A great article came out in AdAge today. Some of the key points for media companies are:

- “Ecommerce companies spend millions on search, e-mail to drive traffic” . . . “media companies have an advantage in this regard, in that their content is already driving significant traffic to their site.”

- “Media companies also found the insight they have about their consumers — knowledge typically used to sell ads — can be deployed to stock their virtual shelves properly”

- During a terrible year across the economy, online retail sales during the first half of the year did not fall nearly as much as online advertising and has recovered in the second half of the year.

All great points and good reasons to integrate ecommerce into your media site. One point that I would disagree with is that ecommerce should be done as an outside tab. Ecommerce as a stand-alone tab on your media site is not taking full advantage of how powerful the experience could be or how the deep relationship/knowledge of your readers could be leveraged. Ecommerce should be integrated contextually into advertising areas to give readers the most seamless experience possible.

Media has the eyeballs, ecommerce has the revenue – - seems like the time has finally come to bring them together.

The full AdAge article by Nat Ives can be found here: E-Commerce Makes a Comeback as Stream of Revenue for Media. Definitely worth a read!