YouTube launched the Shopping feature on Shorts with eligible content creators in the US, who are currently experimenting with the ability to offer products for sale through their own stores.
The feature allows users to purchase products while scrolling through short clips.
A Google spokesperson said, “Viewers in the US, India, Brazil, Canada and Australia can see the tag and interact with advertisers, and we’ll continue to add product tagging for more content creators and in more geographic regions.”
Regarding the motive behind YouTube testing this new feature, Fadi Ramzy, a digital media expert and lecturer at the American University in Cairo, takes us back a little, and says that “e-commerce flourished very much at the height of the Corona pandemic when people applied social distancing and kept their homes, so its companies made great profits.”
Ramzi added, in his interview with Sky News Arabia, that “that boom prompted social media companies to enter the field of e-commerce, and “Facebook” and then “Instagram”, followed by “Tik Tok” recently, and “YouTube” are finally experimenting. .
YouTube ad revenue fell by 2 percent to $7.07 billion, from $7.21 billion a year earlier.
On the other hand, Ramzy draws attention to him, which is “YouTube’s desire to keep pace with the technological acceleration, by presenting the features offered by competitors, as it reproduced the short video feature from “Tik Tok” after achieving great success, and now it follows in its footsteps and enters the world of shopping. electronically, to inflame competition more and more.
And “Tik Tok” had announced a few days ago that it was testing the electronic shopping feature within the application. This was not his first attempt to enter the world of e-commerce, as he had previously tried to add the (Shopify) platform to the application so that users could shop online through it.
To catch up with “Tik Tok”, “YouTube” had introduced a new feature called “We Live Together”, which allows distinguished content makers to invite guests to share the live broadcast with them. New programs are also being tested with the live broadcast service of influencers, who sell products via links in their clips.
Regarding YouTube’s choice to enter the world of online shopping through the “Shorts” feature, Ramzi explains, “This is normal and expected at a time when short videos have become the first and most important form of content that attracts users, and then YouTube considered its shorts feature to be its horse.” The winner and his spearhead to enter a challenge or introduce a new feature.
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And this comes, months after YouTube announced a new way, enabling content makers to make money through short video clips, which it copied from “Tik Tok” after its great success, introducing advertising on short clips, and giving creators 45 percent of the revenue.
Ramzy believes that YouTube is capable of achieving great success within the e-commerce market, and the first reason, in his opinion, is that the company does not undertake any uncalculated adventure, while the second reason is the strength of the platform and its huge physical and technological infrastructure that qualifies it to achieve success.
YouTube is used by about 2 billion people every month, and its short channel receives 15 billion views per day.
