Moving from e-commerce to media

What factors need to be considered

[arieng]

I've been working in internet marketing for over a decade. I've been an entrepreneur, a consultant, and worked in the corporate world, but always in e-commerce selling actual products.

I've recently been offered a very intriguing opportunity to oversee internet marketing and metrics for a fairly large media company. I'm excited about the possibilities, but I'm a little nervous as well. The problem is...they don't really sell anything. Nearly all of their revenue is ad-based.

Does anyone have feedback on the difference between the two worlds? Will my skills from the e-commerce world translate well? What major pitfalls will I need to avoid?

[rens99]

Last week I had a discussion with my gf about this.

I'm in media and to explain her the difference I told her I don't sell any products. Just free content with advertisements.

In the past I've worked in both worlds and my opinions is media is more easy for the lazy webmaster :) You don't have to ship goods.

But media is hard. Hard to get and keep traffic.

It depends all on the topic.

[arieng]

Thanks, you've hit at the heart of what I'm getting at but I feel quite the opposite. I think that e-commerce is easy in that you have tangible products you are trying to sell. Selling ads seems much more difficult to me.

In ecommerce, I'm focused on the conversion rate, average order value, and ROI of every traffic source. If these metrics combine to a certain value, I'm going to be profitable.

The media world doesn't seem as cut and dried. What will be the key metrics to success?