The transfer will allow the writer to promote and handle advert stock throughout the Backcountry ecommerce platform and share within the ensuing income. The settlement, signed in September and set to launch by November, marks one of many first formal collaborations between a media firm and a retailer within the outside class.
“That is an extension of our enterprise,” Phung mentioned. “We at all times attempt to be inventive with new methods with out pulling focus away from our core competencies. For Backcountry, its energy is retail. For us, our energy is constructing content material and promoting.”
The association presents a blueprint for publishers on the lookout for revolutionary methods to increase their viewers attain at a time by which many retailers are seeing audiences dwindle because of platform shifts throttling search and social referral site visitors.
FOR Scoops, Sharp Evaluation, and Insider Context
By submitting your e mail, you conform to our Phrases of Use and Privateness Coverage . Chances are you’ll opt-out anytime by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ from the publication or out of your account.
Subscribe
Loading…
It additionally offers Backcountry an immediate foothold within the booming retail media enterprise—one that almost all retailers take years to construct—whereas AllGear Digital good points entry to lower-funnel stock that enhances its content material and viewers knowledge.
AllGear Digital, the portfolio of which incorporates editorial manufacturers like GearJunkie, signed an analogous partnership in January with the backpacking health app AllTrails. By means of these tie-ups, the media firm will have the ability to supply advertisers a mixed month-to-month attain of 60 million outside fanatics, together with touchpoints throughout each stage of the buyer journey from discovery to buy.
Publishers discover new footing in retail media
Writer-retailer alliances stay uncommon, however they’re more and more enticing as media firms seek for various progress channels.
With referral site visitors from search and social platforms in decline, retail media represents a income stream grounded in commerce outcomes relatively than impressions.
For instance, Greatest Purchase and CNET struck an analogous partnership in April 2024,, as ADWEEK first reported.
The tie-up between Backcountry and AllGear Digital resembles that deal in that it connects a writer with an endemic market and permits the writer to promote into that stock, although no editorial content material from AllGear Digital will run on the Backcountry platform.
The CNET-Greatest Purchase deal was heralded as a first-of-its-kind knowledge collaboration between writer and retailer. The AllGear-Backcountry tie-up applies the identical logic to an fanatic vertical, leveraging the credibility of related content material alongside the conversion potential of retail promoting. This deal additionally introduces promoting to Backcountry for the primary time.
“Backcountry is giving advertisers one thing completely different: the possibility to succeed in customers proper in the mean time they’re deciding what gear to purchase,” Kevin Lenau, interim President of Backcountry, mentioned in a press release. “Being that near a purchase order makes campaigns naturally extra targeted and efficient.”
Constructing a full-funnel community
AllGear Digital operates AGD+, an advert community spanning media manufacturers and digital companions catering to outside fanatics.
Including Backcountry—alongside platforms corresponding to AllTrails and Teton Gravity Analysis—extends that attain past the open internet and into apps and retailers, including attain and diversification of platform.
The promoting capabilities on Backcountry will roll out step by step, starting with normal show advertisements earlier than increasing into extra superior retail-media codecs, in line with Phung.
AllGear Digital, which was based in 2018, is on tempo to see its advert enterprise develop 137% in 2025, buoyed by new distribution companions and robust demand from outside manufacturers, Phung mentioned.
The corporate employs greater than 50 employees, is worthwhile and cash-flow optimistic, and tasks as much as 70% further ad-revenue progress subsequent fiscal 12 months, Phung mentioned, including that the corporate’s annual income is within the “eight figures.”
The deal additionally presents a blueprint for publishers going through a brand new period of platform volatility and compressed margins.
Slightly than counting on traffic-driven promoting or affiliate commissions, media firms can now prolong their affect deeper into the commerce funnel—particularly when working with category-specific retailers that share viewers DNA. Many publishers supply advertiser experiene and shopper insights that retail networks want to seize.
“The timeline of Backcountry constructing an promoting enterprise from scratch can be years,” Phung mentioned. “With the ability to work with us permits them to show that lever on from day one.”
