YouTube Korea to launch local shopping channel for live commerce

Per The Korea Times

YouTube is now trying to capitalize on eCommerce and live selling in South Korea by providing an official shopping channel for this specific activity. With the help of the channel, users can automatically check out the different livestreams of about 30 brands.

The information came from people familiar with the news, saying the feature could launch on June 30. The Yonhap News Agency received word from a YouTube Korea official who told them about the new feature.

"YouTube is committed to building an engaging, informative and entertaining shopping experience for all users, including in Korea. To do this, we may experiment with a variety of YouTube Shopping features from time to time as we continue to work hard to optimize and deliver the best experience for our users,"

This comes a year after the platform released a shopping tab on its Explore section. This allowed for products to be tagged on livestreams, allowing viewers to purchase them directly.

Philip Schindler, chief business officer of Alphabet, gave a statement during the Q4 2022 earnings call regarding the potential of shopping on the platform.

Schindler: "It's still nascent, but we see lots of potential and making it easier for people to shop from the creators, brands and content they love,"

In November, YouTube was reportedly preparing a shopping feature for Shorts. This was despite digital advertisement slowdown.

In February, it was reported that shorts went from 30 billion to 50 billion daily views.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

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The Korea Times