YouTube ventures into video shopping with new feature
YouTube ventures into video shopping with new feature
YouTube plans to make the integration of e-commerce and live streaming more seamless in the future. In a recent announcement, the video streaming platform stated that it intends to allow its global audience of 2 billion monthly users to shop directly from a live-streamed event.
YouTube stated, "We're beta testing a new integrated shopping experience that allows viewers to tap into the credibility and knowledge of trusted creators to make informed purchases directly on YouTube," and that the company is currently in beta testing.
What YouTube’s new feature means
A great deal of the content created by YouTube creators provides information on products, gadgets, services, and other interesting happenings in the world. Various other content creators, such as TechNext, make use of YouTube to live-stream interesting content, such as social media reviews and movie reviews, to their audiences.
If any of these creators, however, desired to make the products they are discussing instantly available to their audience, the traditional method would be to include a link to an online marketplace where viewers could click to purchase the item.
This method of promoting affiliate links for e-commerce will be altered as a result of the new feature introduced by YouTube. When a livestream is in progress, viewers will be able to purchase whatever the event host is promoting directly from the YouTube page.
The direct shopping feature will be made available to a select group of creators in the beta test, in a manner similar to how most new features are made available. Following that, it will be made available to creators in every country where the YouTube shopping feature is supported by the platform.
Other social media platforms have figured out how to incorporate social commerce into their services. Facebook began testing live shopping on its platform with Live Shopping Fridays two months ago, and the results have been promising. Each Friday, the event featured products from three different brands, and it concluded on July 16.
YouTube is entering the social commerce space with a lot of momentum, and it's going to be big. Simsim, an Indian video-shopping startup, was acquired by the company this week, according to a press release.
The Google-owned video streaming platform will almost certainly announce incentives to encourage creators to promote their own video shopping services over those of their competitors as soon as this new feature becomes available to everyone.
