“One of the things that you’ll see is that e-commerce tends to end up over on the side in some cases,” Meredith’s VP, Innovation, Corbin de Rubertis says in this interview with Beet.TV. “But we really try and weave it into the experience itself. As when you’re looking at a recipe, for example, you should be able to see the ingredients from local stores or Amazon Fresh, for that matter.”

The weaving results in “a discreet button” at, say, the bottom of a recipe. “You can push the button and all that stuff goes into the cart and you’ll have it on your doorstep that afternoon,” says de Rubertis, adding that Meredith has a “really interesting network of partners” on the retail side.

“Then we also work with the brands, because the brands are often positioned inside the retailers. We want to make sure there’s a place for them as well.”

Sometimes Meredith will work with both at once, for example a L’Oreal skincare product that can be purchased online at Target.

Like other publishers, Meredith has long positioned relevant products nearby its editorial content, separated from the content itself. A recipe in Better Homes & Gardens might be accompanied by suggested cooking utensils.

While the concept of e-commerce is nothing new, de Rubertis says it should be better integrated into the content consumption process.

“I think in a way, it’s almost just getting started,” he says. “It’s been relegated to kind of the back page or a shopping section on most sites and we’re really betting on the fact that consumers want to see that as long it’s relevant.

“As long as it’s relevant and useful, contextualized and appropriately targeted at the audience, we believe it’s part of the content in a lot of ways. It saves the consumers from having to go off to retailers’ sites sometimes and kind of ping pong in between so they get the inspiration and they can act on it immediately.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.

“It’s great to have data, but you need to turn it into the so what?” says Alysia Borsa, the company’s Chief Marketing & Data Officer, whose team is responsible for all consumer data and insights across the merged assets of Meredith and Time Inc.

“The common goal for all of my team is really to understand our consumers. When we understand our consumers we drive advertising, we drive product, we drive editorial, we drive consumer revenue. So we have this common goal.”

One element of that goal is capturing and understanding user data not just based on the life stage of a consumer and their interests but on capturing the “billions” of intent signals that Meredith sees.

“Every time someone clicks on a video or opens an email or creates a shopping list or clicks to buy, they’re helping us to understand their intent. So life stage, plus interest, now intent,” Borsa says in this interview with Beet.TV.

Complementing intent signals is the capability of creating profiles to understand consumers who are always changing. This is where persistent and dynamic means intersect.

“Persistent is I am a mom, I’m interested in sports. There are persistent aspects about who I am and what I’m interested in. But on Monday mornings versus Saturday afternoons I have different needs.”

Bringing everything together to create the “so what?” is what really unleashes the power of consumer data, according to Borsa.

“The whole team is focused on how do we develop insights to create, for example, video programming that impacts a client or that can drive engagement.”

Two recent examples are when the Better Homes & Gardens team “saw a really interesting trend toward an interest in whipped cream and decorating eggs,” Borsa explains. They created a video about dyeing Easter eggs that garnered 60 million views on Facebook, was shared one million times and was “cross-promoted across multiple brands where we saw a seventy percent completion rate.”

Meredith’s Real Simple title created a “momfessions” video based on insights. The resulting brand-sponsored video got 17 million views, according to Borsa.

This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.