YouTube set to launch its official shopping channel
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Seoul: Google-owned YouTube is all set to launch its official shopping channel in South Korea for live commerce later this month for the first time in the world.
The new channel, which is planned to open on June 30, will provide a live platform to companies and plans to live stream shopping content with about 30 brands at launch, according to the reports.
Last year, YouTube rolled out a new shopping tab in its Explore section, allowing eligible creators to tag products in their live streams or list products under their videos, and viewers to purchase those products.
But this is the first time YouTube is opening an official shopping channel in any country in the world.
"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," a YouTube official told Yonhap News Agency, without providing details.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, will focus on making YouTube more "shoppable," as part of efforts to foster more creators, which will lead to more content and viewers, and ultimately more opportunities for advertisers, Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler, said during Alphabet's fourth-quarter 2022 earnings call.
"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," Schindler said.
YouTube saw its revenue from ads falling 2.6 per cent (year-on-year) in the month of March in a row.
YouTube logged $6.69 billion in advertising revenue for the quarter that ended March 31, compared to $6.87 billion during the same period last year.
The company, however, is seeing growth in YouTube Shorts as watch time and monetization is "progressing nicely". "People are engaging and converting on ads across Shorts at increasing rates," according to Schindler.
With inputs from IANS