Dive Brief:
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Media company PopSugar, which specializes in pop culture and celebrity gossip, last week moved to supplement its fashion coverage with buying opportunities, Digiday reports.
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A new article format dubbed “PopSugar Shop” features a “Shop Story” invitation for readers to look at items related to its subject. A piece on designer shoes may feature shoes from brands or styles featured in the piece, for example. In all, readers have access to some 18 million products, according to the report.
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Users can easily toggle between “Shop Story” and “Read Story.” Popsugar told Digiday shoppable posts drove an 87% more clicks to to retailers’ sites than did its other commerce-focused articles. The shoppability was added to more than 1,000 archived posts.
Dive Insight:
PopSugar’s new move takes a page from its previous ShopStyle search engine and marketing business, which it acquired in 2007 and sold to the Rakuten’s Ebates earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. Since April of 2016, shoppers have been able to store their credit card information through ShopStyle, which drove $1 billion in revenue to retail partners last year, according to company executives.
PopSugar took about 15% for each ShopStyle-originating transaction, thanks to a network of some 14,000 partner blogs and fashion or gossip websites, and retail partners as diverse as Target, Nicole Miller, Neiman Marcus, Express and Topshop.
The company, from its inception, has positioned itself as a commerce-plus-content effort, and has experimented with a variety of other content-commerce connections, including affiliate link and shoppable posts. In addition to its articles and abundant social media activity, the company runs a subscription box business, though it does not disclose its sales.
While the company’s ambitions put it in competition with Amazon, the e-retail giant’s strength is in consumer goods rather than PopSugar’s forte, fashion. “Our brands are different,” Sugar told The Wall Street Journal last year. “We think there is an opportunity to become the iTunes or App Store of fashion and accessories.”
