YouTube is presenting shopping features to Shorts, its TikTok-like short-form video offering. Now, users can make purchases while scrolling through Shorts, thanks to the new shopping features. The Financial Times broke this news first on Tuesday (15 Nov).
The company is beginning to present shopping features on YouTube Shorts with eligible creators in the United States who are presently showing the ability to tag products from their stores. Viewers in the United States, India, Canada, Australia, and Brazil can see the tags and shop through the Shorts. In the future, YouTube plans to continue expanding the availability of tagging to more creators and nations.
In addition to the shopping features, YouTube is testing an affiliate scheme in the US that enables creators to get paid when users buy the things they recommend in their regular videos and shorts. The business claims that the project is still in its early stages. Youtube intends to expand the experiment to more creators next year.
The information was released a few weeks after YouTube revealed that from next year creators would receive a 45% cut of ad revenue. If they reach a new Shorts-specific barrier of 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days, creators will be allowed to apply to the company’s Partner Program in early 2023. After that point, they will gain 45% of the ad revenue from their videos.
The number of monthly users of YouTube’s Shorts has surpassed 1.5 billion. Yet despite this achievement, YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue dropped short of forecasts and fell 1.9% year over year, according to Alphabet’s quarterly earnings report published last month. With the advertising business in descent, YouTube undoubtedly sees the new shopping features as a means to diversify its revenue sources.
With the introduction of products like shoppable advertisements and the capability to make direct purchases from live streams presented by creators, YouTube has been pushing to make its platform more of a destination for online shopping over the past few years. It seems reasonable for YouTube to introduce commerce to Shorts in light of these actions. TikTok and Meta have also made investments in the future of retail, making YouTube not the only digital giant to wager on it.
In the US, TikTok secretly started testing TikTok Shop last week. Users can purchase goods straight from the TikTok Shop app. Before this elaboration, the feature was only available in the United Kingdom and some parts of Southeast Asia. In collaboration with Shopify, the business also started testing TikTok Shopping earlier this year in the US, UK, and Canada.
Instagram allows users to post products during live streams and in the Shopping section. Customers can browse and shop recommended items here. Additionally, brands can make their profile accessible through a product catalog.
Final Words
These new Youtube features are a great addition if you’re an eCommerce advertiser, brand, or creator and a great way to generate revenue if your channel is large enough. Sorry if you are lead gen or B2B.