By Leah Montebello
IN A BID to diversify its revenue streams from the dwindling ads market, YouTube is going head first into the world of shopping.
While the tech firm, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, launched its short-form, TikTok style video offering ‘Shorts’ in 2020, the firm is now testing how budding influencers can sell products through the platform.
This would allow its army of Gen Z users to scroll through video content and snap up listed products – something that the Bytedance owned TikTok are also beginning to roll out in the market.
In an interview with the Financial Times, YouTube’s Shopping’s general manager Michael Martin said the company’s goal was to “focus on the best monetisation opportunities for creators in the market”.
It comes as the video-sharing platform’s ad revenues continued to decline in Alphabet’s latest earnings, echoing Facebook owner Meta’s own advertising slump amid macroeconomic uncertainty.
Martin told the FT that the tech giant plans to roll out two pilot shopping schemes next year, paying creators a commission on the products that they sell via YouTube.
The social commerce market has rocketed across China in recent years, and management consultancy firm McKinsey reckons the market is expected to grow to more than $2trn by 2025.
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