E-commerce has seen a huge spike in recent months, courtesy COVID-19 and the new social distancing norms that have made physical shopping a relic of the past. While companies like Amazon, Alibaba and even Facebook have had a field day with this refreshing change, Google has been forced to the sidelines, watching, as more and more advertisers back out of the online marketing game. Thus, to salvage the situation and make good on the recent boom in e-commerce, Google is taking a chance at trying to convert YouTube into a shopping center, allowing you to buy products directly as you seem them in the video.
The company has recently started asking creators to use YouTube software to tag and track products featured in their clips, a report from Bloomberg states. The data will then be linked to analytics and shopping tools directly from Google, allowing users to buy the products they see in a video without ever leaving the app. Thus, YouTube will essentially become an online shopping center, where you will be able to ‘window shop’ as well.
For now, only a limited number of creators have been extended the opportunity to use these feature. However, they will be in full control of what products get displayed with a video.
The report states that it’s not clear how YouTube will generate revenue from this model, but the service has begun offering subscriptions for creators and takes a cut of 30% from those payments. However, it can very well take a page out of Apple’s playbook and charge a commission on every transaction facilitated through its platform.
This move, if implemented correctly, will help Google enter a market that’s recently seen a lot of interest from tech companies-E commerce. The market had already been on a nice trajectory, but coronavirus pushed it to the extreme. A report named ‘E-commerce Trends Report 2020’ claims that as of June 2020, overall e-commerce in India had not just recovered but witnessed an order-volume growth of 17%. Thus, it’s fair to assume that Google wants in, and YouTube is as good a place as any to start.
