YouTube Plans to Launch Live Shopping Channel — Retail Bum

Video streaming platform Youtube will soon be rolling out a live streaming platform in South Korea.

The channel’s launch, which marks the first such attempt by YouTube, will enable viewers to live shop products from 30 partnering brands for 90 days in the Korean language, according to Yohnap and other Korean media sources.

“We may experiment with a variety of YouTube Shopping features from time to time,” a YouTube spokesperson said without going into any further details.

Earlier in February 2023, Google’s Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted that there is “lots of potential in making it easier for people to shop from the creators, brands, and content they love.”

YouTube’s new channel could potentially help the company cut itself a slice of Korea’s rapidly growing live-stream shopping industry, which is presently valued at more than $7.6 billion.

Its launch comes at a time when YouTube is seeing a decline in ad revenue, with advertising cutting their overall spending and other social commerce platforms such as TikTok gaining market share.

Alphabet’s recent earnings reports showed that YouTube’s ad revenue fell by 2.6% year over year, with the platform raking in $6.69 billion in Q1 2023, down from the $6.87 billion it had generated last year.

The decline in revenue has prompted the platform to focus more on monetizing its TikTok-like Shorts, which now receive an average of 50 billion daily views.

Originally published at https://retailbum.com on June 27, 2023.