YouTube makes it easier for viewers to buy creators’ products

The news: YouTube introduced two features that aim to make it easier for creators to market products through videos on its platforms, per TechCrunch.

• YouTube is rolling out a feature that allows creators to make a shopping button appear at relevant points in their videos, such as when they’re demonstrating a beauty product. YouTube’s tests of the feature in the US drove people who saw the timestamps to click on tagged products roughly twice as often.
• It is also allowing creators to tag affiliate products in bulk across their video libraries based on products added to the video’s description.

The context: The new tools represent the latest steps by YouTube to bolster shopping on its platform.

• Its highest-profile moves include partnering with Shopify last year to allow creators and merchants to sell products on their channels, expanding livestream shopping capabilities, and adding shopping features to YouTube Shorts.
• YouTube’s efforts come at a time when TikTok is moving aggressively to build up a major social commerce platform. TikTok plans to use steep discounts throughout the holiday season to lure value-oriented shoppers to its fledgling online marketplace.

The big takeaway: YouTube’s efforts appear aimed at grabbing a larger share of the rapidly growing social commerce market; our forecast expects US social commerce sales to grow 26.3% this year, to $67.6 billion.

• That growth will come from an influx of new shoppers (we expect the number of social buyers to grow 4.1% this year) and existing shoppers spending more.

It stands to reason that the simpler YouTube makes it for creators to sell products, and for consumers to buy those goods, the more goods will be sold through its platform.