#DigiTrends | Live Stream

Trend: Dynamic Digital Commerce

In an effort to bring more entertaining, dynamic elements to the digital shopping experience, brands and retailers are experimenting with interactive live-video streams that create novel buying moments. Well established within the gaming and entertainment spaces, new players from tech to auto and fashion, have begun integrating live content into their digital offering. For the connected customer, live streaming brings the one-on-one and social aspect of in-store interactions to life online, allowing customers to discover, learn and experience product in a more dynamic context. These live streams have evolved the digital relationship between brand and customer beyond static to real-time, while adding an entertainment element missing from digital catalogs and websites. With the advent of 5G effectively eliminating streaming lag for users, live stream and social commerce are positioned to evolve from a niche experimentation to a mainstream tool, adding a fully omni-channel sales channel to the marketing mix. Looking to the customer experience, live stream promises the instantaneous expectation that’s come to define every step of the consumer journey. 

Industry Insights

The global live streaming market is forecasted to be valued at $60 billion by 2026. 

 More than two-thirds (67%) of consumers globally have streamed live video content, while 70% of consumers who live stream do so at least once a day.

 3 in 10 global internet users aged 16-64 now say they’ve watched a live gaming stream recently, rising to 42% of 16-24.

 One in every five customers that click to view a product’s landing page through live streaming ends up buying—a conversion rate of 20%.

 In 2019, live streaming accounted for $6.2 billion yuan, or approximately $880.4 million in marketing revenue in China. 

 Hotstar, India’s Disney-owned streaming service, set a global record for the number of viewers tuning into a live event, when 18.6 million viewers logged in to watch the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament. 

Case Studies 

Alibaba’s #Double11 Becomes A Month-Long Event Via TaoBao Live 

Expanding beyond 11.11 or Single’s Day, China’s e-commerce site Alibaba incorporated live pre-order events as early as two weeks before the one-day event. Brands and retailers showcased products that would be exclusively available on Singles’ Day via TaoBao Live and customers were able to reserve items ahead of time. Cosmetics brand Estée Lauder hosted daily live streams leading up to the event, where viewers could put down pre-sale deposits for limited-edition items. As a result, Estée Lauder says it brought in $143 million worth of pre-sales. In all, more than 17,000 brands participated in Alibaba live streams this year, up 200% y-o-y, with Taobao Live recording sales of $2.85 billion this Singles’ Day, accounting for approximately 7.5% of the company’s $38.3 billion total event sales. 

 Amazon Live Updates The Home Shopping Experience 

U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon launched its live shopping feature Amazon Live this year as a tool for both brands and customers. With Amazon Live, brands are able to participate in Amazon-produced live stream's around specific categories and events, while customers shop the featured products as they watch along. In addition to its daily website-based livestream, where brands are featured based on promotional fees, Amazon has also launched its app, Amazon Live Creator, allowing vendors and brands to host their own, unpromoted live streams at no cost. For Prime Day, consumer electronic brands that used the Amazon Live Feature saw on average a 95% spike in sales compared to average hourly sales throughout the day, while home brands sales increased by 131%. 

 Walmart x Eko Combines Entertainment And Commerce In Real Time 

In collaboration with interactive video platform Eko, retail corporation Walmart is rolling out shoppable videos. With choose your own experience viewing options, Eko’s original content is tailored to Walmart’s product offering. Shows offered range from a personalized cooking series Cook Together, where viewers are able to cook personalized recipes alongside hosts, to Clothes Call, where viewers can style characters from head-to-toe for an array of events. Viewers are then directed to Walmart.com after the experience, where they can purchase all of the items that were featured during the streams.

What This Means For Retailers 

• Deliver a seamless omnichannel shopper experience by folding discovery, education/entertainment and purchase into a livestream session.
• Understand what channels resonate most with your target audience as you make decisions about where to host and market live streamed events.
• Utilize live streams as pre-purchase sales tools, offering customers a personalized learning experience via one-on-one interactions with sales associates, experts, influencers etc.
• Consider how live streaming can be used to launch new products and what content will be most meaningful to bring their benefits to life. Tap into today’s drop culture via live events offering limited-edition products and offers to audiences. 
• Allow the audience to interact with hosts as well as one another during live streams to bring an interactive social aspect to the experience.
• Determine the key metrics that can be measured as part of the live stream experience to drive ROI, refinement and post-event follow-up.