Is “From YouTube to You” for You?

Intro

Last summer, Kristy, one of our Account Executives, went on a shopping spree in New York. She did a whopping 70% of her shopping through YouTube’s Livestream Shopping Event. We guessed she wasn’t really a fan of in-store shopping and preferred online shopping to offline. But, as it turns out, she loved the shopping experience on YouTube; plus, the amazing deals and offers provided in the event attracted her left, right and center.

From YouTube to You

Today, we are in the mid of YouTube’s 10-day social shopping event, “From YouTube to You”. This includes videos, livestreams and Shorts, featuring creators promoting their brands. The event aims at making YouTube a one-stop shop for people to complete their holiday shopping.

In order to provide a thorough shopping experience, there are embedded links within the video that customers can click to purchase; Q&A sessions where the audience can interact with the creators; opportunity for brands to offer prizes, discounts and so on.

Season for Video Shopping

According to Adobe’s 2022 Holiday Season Online Shopping Data, there has been a surge in online shopping for the holiday season according to the data released by Adobe Analytics recently.

While e-Commerce was a level-up to in-store shopping, shoppable videos take you a step further. For those people who prefer a quick and instant shopping experience at the comfort of their home instead of jostling through the crowded streets for holiday shopping, shoppable videos turn ideal.

There is another added advantage to shoppable videos.

Unlike digital ads, where product discovery happens on the ads, researching happens on the wild wide reaches of the internet and purchase happens on your e-commerce portals, shoppable ads take your audience through the phases of Discovery -> Research -> Purchase. Thus becomes one-stop-shop for shopping. Moreover, if the audience watching your video is already hooked on your product/brand or influencer, you don’t have to go through the trouble of influencing them. Questions if any can be answered through the Q&A sessions, thus helping them fulfill the research phase.

But Is “From YouTube to You” for You?

Sadly, not for all. At least yet. This is only the second season and have not become mainstream yet. You can benefit from this only if you fulfill the following criteria:

1. Your channel is eligible for YouTube shopping
2. You are based out of Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, or the United States.
3. Your channel has more than 20,000 subscribers
4. Your channel is not an Official Artist Channel, music channel

Even if you fulfill these criteria, you may get great value from “From YouTube to You”, only if you also happen to sell beauty products or gifts and give amazing deals. We don’t see expensive gadgets or home appliances getting featured in the event yet.

Bottom-line

YouTube livestream shopping festival conducted earlier this summer, was a hit. If the same happens with ‘From YouTube to You’, there are a lot of chances for shoppable videos to become the future of online shopping. Most importantly, for Google, this is a great response to Instagram shoppable ads. How well this will turn out? That’s something that only time will tell.