Condé Nast's Allure magazine is embracing mobile commerce, giving readers of its tablet edition a way to shop the products featured in editorial and advertising content without leaving the magazine.

A total of 64 pages of the September edition are shoppable, including 60 editorial pages and four ads. Participating advertisers include CoverGirl and Shiseido while the retailers involved include Macy?s and Sephora.

?Today?s consumer goes on a discovery journey when shopping,? said Scott Cooper, CEO of ShopAdvisor, Boston.

?They do not distinguish between editorial and advertising, both forms of content are equally valuable when learning about and researching their consideration set of products,? he said. ?Therefore it makes perfect sense to shop enable both.

?It doesn?t matter if a reader finds the perfect nail polish in Allure within a story on summer beauty products, or within a CoverGirl ad. That reader will be offered the same colors and opportunity to save or buy the polish regardless of the content type.?

Tablet commerce
Allure is leveraging ShopAdvisor?s platform to make its tablet edition shoppable.

The new functionality made its debut in the September issue of the tablet edition, which is available now. As a magazine focused on providing expert beauty tips and recommendations, mobile gives Allure a way to easily make its content shoppable for readers who almost always have their mobile devices nearby.

Users see a consistent ?shop? button across the editorial and ad content in the Allure tablet edition. When users click on the button, it launches a collection of products that have been curated for them.

Users can click on an individual item to find retailers that offer it. Besides Macy?s and Sephora, other participating retailers include Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor.

Approximately three products are available to shop for editorial pages. The number varies for advertising pages.

Watch list
Readers are also able to save products they are interested in by adding them to a watch list and set reminders to be alerted when prices drop or when the product becomes available.

The list is accessible across the Web and mobile, enabling readers to reference the list while they are shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores.

The interactive ads give marketers a chance to feature additional products and establish ongoing engagements with readers who set notifications to be reminded about a product later.

Brands with shoppable ads in the September edition include Bare Minerals and SK11 in addition to Cover Girl and Shiseido.

With the growth in consumption of a variety of types of content via mobile devices, magazine publishers are looking for ways to reach their readers where they are increasingly spending their time as well as provide brands with solutions for adding extra value to their ads.

Early results from the use of ShopAdvisor functionality across a variety of publications reveals that readers are considering both editorial and advertising content when making a purchasing decision.

?While we are still early in our commercial rollout, we have seen some surprising trends,? Mr. Cooper said. ?For example, we?re seeing consistently that when a publisher makes editorial and advertising shoppable, their readers are spending more time engaging with those ads - although both have stronger engagement rates and time spent than non-shoppable content.

?That?s a bit counterintuitive to the traditional view that editorial is more likely to drive consideration and purchase than advertising,? he said.

?It demonstrates the importance of lighting up the brand across the entire publication and reinforces the idea that the consumer is going on a discovery journey where the type of content, or medium for that matter, is irrelevant at that stage of their consideration process.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York