The “Misery Business” of Commerce x Media

Welcome to Wednesday, futurists.

Business media for the commerce trade is in a serious state of flux. From traditional “trade media” outlets to new independent operations helmed by current (and former) commerce operators, the landscape is also more crowded than ever.

Today we’ll unpack why the eCom and retail business operator needs so many media publications, who each of these markets serve, and why attention is harder to win (and to retain) than ever before.

Commerce Media? In This Attention Economy??

As the lines between commerce and content blur, new independent retail trade media brands are learning a costly lesson: in the attention economy, being heard doesn't always mean being profitable.

• The Big Idea: DTC media brands are caught in a paradox—creating content is easier than ever, but standing out is increasingly difficult.
• Why It Matters: As commerce and media converge, businesses must navigate a saturated content landscape while providing genuine value.
• The Bottom Line: Success in this space requires balancing attention-grabbing content with actionable, industry-specific intelligence.

The Allure and Peril of Media Creation

As Mike Mallazzo put it in his most recent edition of TABULA RASA, "Commerce is the ultimate form of media." Since 2018, we've watched the world's largest marketplaces become marketplaces for ad revenue.

But it became bleedingly obvious this week that the business of starting a media brand is as sexy as it has ever been, but— at least in commerce—it's never been as perilous.

This week alone saw the launch of JAM, a Tiger Beat-inspired heartthrob magazine by direct mail company PostPilot, and Sendlane's divestiture of the event "series" and associated brand Commerce Roundtable to exiting CEO Jimmy Kim.

The Drowning Pool of Digital Content

🫡 It makes sense in today's organic traffic landscape (if such a thing exists)—create more media. Commerce businesses have a ton of ways to do that: partnerships, UGC, and celebrities; but the goal is standing out and aggregating attention.

🚿 We're not just bathing in media; we're drowning in it. The ease of content creation has led to an oversaturation of the digital space. Today's micro-media businesses must juggle multiple disciplines:

• Marketing
• Partnerships
• Sales
• Go-to-market strategies
• Insights and foresight

This multidisciplinary approach requires not just skill, but also the ability to be likable and command attention—a tall order in an increasingly crowded field.

The Ecosystem Squeeze & Tradeoffs

The current landscape of DTC-aligned independent media is populated by current and former operators whose side businesses have become media ventures. Examples like Chew on This and Limited Supply showcase how media can be an organic channel for growing influence and building products or agency services.

However, these media brands face significant challenges:

1. Creating a voice distinct from their creators
2. Surviving multiple hype cycles in the industry
3. Competing for a shrinking pool of advertising dollars

📉 As one Future Commerce Plus subscriber noted off-record, "We're in a shrinking app and plugin economy. Those software companies aren't spending on marketing, and there are fewer of them overall."

🤧 The more media you produce, the more you become consumed by the business of media itself. For "business operators" claiming expertise in the current eCommerce landscape, there's an expiration date on their point of view. Eventually, that perspective becomes divided with the business of creating attention.

🤏 The limitations of popular platforms further complicate this dilemma. As one CMO told me earlier today, "Shopify is a great beachhead, but you can't build a giant business on it. You eventually have to look outside of that ecosystem."

The Evolution of Trade Media

The subscription media and independent publisher landscape in the eCommerce, founder, VC, and technology sectors has exploded since 2018. Pioneers like 2PM and Lean Luxe set the stage for today's fragmented "trade media" landscape.

These brands served dual purposes:

1. Acting as communities
2. Functioning as independent alternatives to trade publications

They catered to those who believed capital allocation would fund a disruption of legacy brands and usher in an era of more direct customer relationships. The current crop of independent media in the DTC space faces a critical question: does it truly serve the dual purposes of a trade publication? That is:

1. Speaking specifically to those in the trade
2. Becoming a trusted voice of critique
3. Aggregating an audience representative of the larger industry
4. Acting as a voice both to and from industry professionals

👀 Both 2PM and Lean Luxe are in hibernation as of 2024, though forms of their media and communities live on. 2PM still publishes a letter, and Lean Luxe’s Slack is quieter than ever, but the community is slowly self-organizing elsewhere.

🎙️ But the emerging players are creating cold outreach engines to bolster attendance to events that features a lot of the same voices. It’s a physical manifestation of the FYP of people in the DTC echo chamber. To be clear, that’s a positive for many people.

The challenge for all of these media brands, new and old, is not just to create content but to create value, and that value has to last beyond a hype cycle. Interviewing founders on a microphone just isn’t a differentiator anymore.

Having a particular worldview and examining commerce through that lens is what all media founders should be doing (in my humble opinion); which means you must tap into culture as much as you dispense opinions about ad account structure.

“So What?”

This new wave of media must navigate a paradox of being both insider and critic, aggregator and curator. In an ecosystem drowning in content, the true measure of success will be the ability to offer genuine insight and lasting value to their audience; that’s hard to do if your media is so closely tied to the health and performance of the demand engines of Commerce.

As the lines between commerce and media continue to blur, the most successful DTC media brands will be those that can balance the art of attention-grabbing with the science of providing actionable, industry-specific intelligence.

The future belongs to those who can turn the flood of information into a curated stream of wisdom. Or at least, that’s the future we’re betting on here at FC.

— Phillip

P.S. Haunted Checkouts? Satanic SERPS?? Check out our latest installment of “Spooky Commerce,” our October series for the creepier side of capitalism. Available on Apple and Spotify.