Content is the new retail store

• Content is king online -- the new retail boutique
• Despite technology%2C most people still suffer through the same two-step shopping journey online
• Mulu Media%2C Outbrain ease commerce%2C content recommendations

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Content has never been more important to retailers and consumers than it is now in the smartphone age. In this guest opinion, Mulu Media CEO Amaryllis Fox explains why.)

LOS ANGELES -- Think back to before you recognized the screech of AOL dial-up connecting the triangle to the key.

Back in the damp darkness of the pre-web, when you read about things in glossy magazines and saw them on TV. Then, if you wanted them badly enough, and it wasn't raining outside, you put on your coat and tromped down to Main Street to buy them.

Fast-forward to today, where, by the magic of the interwebs, all that reading and watching and shopping can happen in one place online. Efficient, right?

Well, no. Despite all the fiberoptics and modems and hash tags and links, most people still suffer through the same two-step shopping journey online as they did in the day of brick-and-mortar. Discover a product in an article, blog post, video. Then, go off to a retail site to buy it.

That doesn't make any sense.

It used to be that Americans shopped from wholesalers. The Sears catalog offered everything a family could need. But it was a pain to find the few things you might actually like. And it restricted you to just one retailer's wares. Thus was born the retail store -- the local boutique -- where a shopkeeper curated a few items from many wholesalers to offer only the selection their customers were craving.

Today, content has become that retail boutique. A mommy blog's post on must-have travel toys. A fashion magazine's article on Fall fashion trends. A YouTube channel's review of top gadgets for the holidays. That's the kind of hyper-specific curation that once kept local boutiques in business. And selecting that perfect crop of products is now the work of blogs, magazines and videos the web over.

So here is the point. Making people leave that content page to buy featured products is like your local boutique showing you a display lamp to whet your appetite, then sending you out the door to find one you can buy somewhere else on your own.

And that fact isn't lost on content creators. After all, why rely on dwindling ad revenue when you can turn millions of pages of content into mini retail boutiques, catering specifically to a unique clan of existing readers.

The trouble, though, has always been implementation. Bloggers and journalists are busy people. They don't have time to broker relationships with countless manufacturers or add special links behind every product they mention. And that's where semantics geeks perk up -- the genius types behind Google and search -- the kind who can write algorithms that scan pages and know automatically what is being discussed and therefore what products to offer.

Mulu Media, in Los Angeles, enables this kind of contextual commerce for publishers like Hearst and Conde Nast. Israel-based Outbrain does the same for content recommendations. Companies like Mulu and Outbrain work their magic as simple widgets, added to publisher sites to automatically scan content and pull together products from across the web, serving up exactly the right selection of goodies for a reader on that particular page.

Obvious when it comes to product-heavy subjects, like fashion or tech. But even cooler when applied to substantive content -- the news, for example, or Wikipedia articles. Imagine reading a CNN piece about Iran on your iPad and having a shelf of available products at the end -- a new Ahmedinejad biography in iBooks or a Mid East documentary on Netflix. Click, purchase and enjoy in a seamless extension of the article you just finished reading.

Content is the new retail store. And publishers are increasingly interested in turn-key solutions to capture that potential commerce. Reading a recipe on Good Housekeeping? Buy the roaster and immersion blender you'll need without leaving the page. It saves you the hassle of visiting a separate retailer to purchase the products you want, while giving those retailers a more useful, less annoying way to advertise their goods.

Stocking the shelves of the content page boutique in this way opens a new realm in digital ads -- a realm where Williams Sonoma can buy the word "whisk" to be sure its their whisk available for purchase on every recipe page that calls for a whisk. And in a world where you're more likely to survive a plane crash than click on a banner ad, that kind of contextual commerce is a potentially big win for all.

So, look out for more of these integrated experiences. Get excited to shop the posts you read and the videos you watch. And don't be surprised the next time you ask a friend where they buy their clothes and hear the name of a blog, not a retailer, as your answer.