For premium publishers, COMMERCE CONTENT means premium products and prices
- Duncan Morris
- Apr 16
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Intelligence for the Content-to-Commerce Economy
Contalto is the only source of competitive and market intelligence for the publisher commerce content business. With growing coverage of 110+ premium publishers and data back to January 2025, we are uniquely qualified to share our data and insight on all things commerce-content.
US$0.6 billion and counting...
In the past 12 months, we've tracked commerce content articles promoting goods and services with a combined value of well over $0.6 billion.
As 20% of articles do not include purchase prices for some or all featured products, the actual figure lies well north of $0.6 billion.
$380 per product and $5,000 per article
Since premium publishers and their audiences are a natural fit with high-end goods and services, price points in commerce content are impressively high.
The MPP (Median Price per Product) in premium publisher commerce content articles is US$380. For one in five publishers the MPP is US$500+.
The GPA (gross price per article across all featured products) is US$5,100.
On a sectoral basis, median prices range from a low of $25 for the Household Products sector up to $20,000 for Tiny Homes and $37,000 for Autos & Auto Sales.
Women's Apparel is top in content volume and value
Women's Apparel is the single largest sector with over 21K articles promoting products totalling $137 million.
Watches & Jewellery is the second largest sector in terms of gross product value across all articles ($76m)
Rounding out the top 5 sectors in terms of gross product value are: Multi-Sector - typically sales, deals and gift guides spanning several product sectors - at $33m, Homeware at $32m, and Bags, Purses and Wallets at $31m.
Once again, the true value is significantly higher, as products without prices are excluded.
Commerce content is long-form, but not at the per-product level
Average article word count is 2,100
94% of publishers dedicate 1000+ words to each commerce content article, rising to 6000 words at the top end.
Lengthy listicles averaging over 30 products per article drive Buzzfeed's 6000 word count while image-heavy galleries result in lower word counts for publishers like Who What Wear (1000).
Average word count per product is 190
However, the depth of product and service information varies enormously by publisher and by product sector.
On a sectoral basis, articles featuring financial products and services or technology products have much higher average word count. E.g. 1000 words per product for Loans & Mortgages, 876 for Credit Cards, 820 for Drones and 762 for Mobile Phones.
At the other end of the scale, commerce articles featuring Women's and Men's apparel have the fewest words devoted to each product (82 and 113 respectively).
At the publisher level, it's not only tech and finance publishers like ZDNet and CNBC that dedicate many words per product (1,300 and 786 respectively), but also in-depth product review services like The New York Times' Wirecutter (660 words) and The Telegraph's Telegraph Recommended (530 words).
Video in commerce content is all or nothing
Only 5% of articles include video but some publishers are all in.
Beauty publishers like Condé Nast's Allure and Glamour are leaders in commerce content video with averages of almost 4 videos per article for Allure and at least 1 per article for Glamour.
Broad-based product recommendation services like CNN's Underscored aren't far behind with an average of 0.7 videos per article.
COMMERCE CONTENT INTELLIGENCE: what we offer...
Market Insight
The ONLY source of intelligence on the size, shape and seasonality of the commerce content market. Find the white space to support your growth.
Competitive Intelligence
Understand your positioning and competitive context via the 'compare' tool. Identify untapped brand partnerships to boost revenue.
Analysis Platform
Find and browse relevant commerce content via our intuitive platform. Drill down for article analytics, or take a top-down view with dashboards.
Alerts & Downloads
Share the intelligence with your team via automated alerts on competitor content and scheduled report downloads on brands, publishers or sectors of interest.
Underpinning these use cases is our wealth of commerce content data points and metrics, including 85K brands, 110+ publishers, 39K retailers, 3K authors, 87 sectors, 426 sub-sectors, 900K products, pricing, seasons, occasions, article types and more.
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