YouTube to roll out shopping destination in India next week

A 3D-printed YouTube icon is seen in front of a displayed YouTube logo in this illustration

YouTube on July 19 announced that it is introducing a new shopping destination in India, the United States and Brazil starting next week, amid the rising adoption of live commerce and shoppable videos in the country.

The shopping destination will be available through YouTube's Explore tab and will feature "relevant shoppable content" for viewers in these countries with plans to expand to additional countries later this year, the company said.

Over the past year, YouTube has been rolling out several shopping-related features on its platform across the world as it looks to transform into a shopping destination.

"One of the most anticipated opportunities we'll bring to our brands this year is Shopping. This new experience taps into the deep trust creators have built with their communities to help our partners expand into the booming world of e-commerce. We’re thinking about shoppable videos, Live Shopping, and, more broadly, how shopping appears across the app," YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan said in February 2022 while elaborating on the platform's 2022 roadmap.

The company also acquired video commerce platform Simsim in India in July last year, in a bid to replicate the Douyin-Taobao model in the country.

In an official blog post on July 19, David Katz, VP of shopping product at YouTube, mentioned that they have made live events such as US music and arts festival Coachella, Brazil's popular soccer tournament Paulistão and YouTube’s second annual Beauty Festival completely shoppable for viewers this year.

"We've expanded access to shopping to even more creators and added more types of products that can be tagged in a video so viewers can shop even more. We've also reimagined product launches, hosting the first ever Shopping on Shorts challenge with Glossier, to exclusively launch their no. 1 pencil eyeline," Katz said.

To access YouTube's shopping features, creators need to meet certain minimum requirements. This includes having more than 1,000 subscribers or an official artist channel, not having a significant number of videos designated as made for kids, and the channel should be approved for monetisation.

On July 19, YouTube also announced a partnership with Shopify to enable creators and merchants to feature their products across their YouTube channels and videos.

Eligible creators can now easily link their Shopify store to their YouTube channel to show their products and leverage Shopify’s real-time inventory syncing capabilities. Creators in the US can also enable onsite checkout so that viewers can complete their purchases without leaving YouTube, Katz said.

Besides this, YouTube has also introduced new tools within YouTube Studio's 'Shopping' tab so that creators can easily manage how their products are tagged and appear across their channels. All eligible creators can also access live shopping features like the ability to tag products to a live stream directly from the Live Control Room, Katz said.

"We know that creators spend a lot of time building a business and developing their products, so we want to make it even easier for them to connect and manage their stores on YouTube and bring their products directly to their audience," he said.