The numbers behind
commerce content.
Briefs on the market we operate in. Every figure is attributed and marked with how solid it is, because a desk that publishes uncited numbers has no business selling editorial standards.
Where things stand
- Global e-commerce sales, 2026
- $6.88tn INDUSTRY TRACKER
- Share of all retail, 2026
- 21.1% INDUSTRY TRACKER
- Affiliate spend, 2026
- $20bn INDUSTRY TRACKER
- Wirecutter GMV, 2024
- $1bn+ REPORTED
- Publisher search traffic, yr to Nov 2025
- −33% THIRD-PARTY ESTIMATE
- Dotdash affiliate revenue, Q1 2025
- +26% REPORTED
Four things worth knowing
What a billion-dollar commerce desk actually costs
Wirecutter drove over $1bn in gross merchandise value in both 2023 and 2024. The interesting number isn't the billion. It's the 160 journalists it takes to produce it.
Read the briefSearch stopped sending the traffic. Commerce content still has to pay.
Measured click-through loss on pages sitting under an AI Overview roughly doubled between April 2025 and February 2026. Every study disagrees on the magnitude and agrees on the direction.
Read the briefThe commerce pie is growing while the traffic pie shrinks
Industry trackers put affiliate at just over $20bn in 2026, heading toward $38bn by 2030. The spend is moving toward publishers even as search sends fewer of them readers.
Read the briefA fifth of all retail is online, and the guides get written anyway
Global e-commerce passes $6.88tn in 2026, about 21% of all retail sales. The share keeps climbing, which is the floor under every commerce-content business.
Read the briefThese are the market's. Want to see yours?
We'll score your commerce library against category demand and observed revenue per thousand, and show you the gap in the same format as the briefs above.
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