YouTube announced today that it’s launching several new shopping features for both viewers and creators. Most notably, YouTube is partnering with Shopify to allow creators and merchants to feature their products on their channels. Eligible creators can now link their Shopify store to their YouTube channel.
With this partnership, creators who link their stores can display their products across their channel and leverage Shopify’s real-time inventory syncing. Creators in the United States can now enable onsite checkout to allow viewers to complete their purchases without leaving YouTube. Creators can start benefiting from the Shopify partnership by visiting the “Shopping” tab in YouTube Studio.
The company is also introducing a new shopping destination in Explore for viewers in the United States, India and Brazil. The new shopping destination will feature relevant shoppable content for viewers in these countries. YouTube plans to roll out the shopping destination to more countries later this year.
YouTube also announced that all eligible creators can now access live shopping features, such as the ability to tag products to a livestream directly from the Live Control Room.
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Lastly, the company is introducing new tools within YouTube Studio’s “Shopping” tab so that creators can easily manage how their products are tagged and appear across their channel. YouTube says it’s aware that creators spend a lot of time developing their products, so it wants to make it easier for them to manage their stores on YouTube and bring their products directly to their audience through these new tools.
The launch of the new features comes as YouTube has been working to transform its platform into more of a shopping destination with product launches like shoppable ads or more recently, the ability to shop directly from livestreams hosted by creators.
A few weeks ago, the company teased upcoming features that it claimed would make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands. One of the new features will allow two creators to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream. This could effectively double the draw for the event, as each creator would bring their own fanbase to the stream. Another upcoming is something YouTube calls “live redirects,” which will allow creators to start a shopping livestream on their channel, then redirect their audience over to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching.
YouTube teases livestream shopping expansion with co-streams, live redirects
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