Remember that night you drank three Moscow Mules and ordered that $500 Vitamix on QVC? Good news. Soon you’ll be able to make uninformed buying decisions like this on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as well.
East Side, West Side
Like many tech trends, live streaming really caught hold in China, and now it’s making its way West. Chinese consumers spend billions on products via live-streaming apps. ShopShops, for example, is a live-streaming app where hosts guide Chinese shoppers through American stores. A Chinese shopper can interact with the shopper and remotely snatch that last Coach handbag off the shelf from thousands of miles away.
Social Commerce is Sizzling
With Instagram increasing 118.3% and Facebook 91.4% from the second to third quarters of 2019, social commerce is booming. Seamless sells, so the big platforms are investing in making the purchasing process more frictionless than ever.
- Over at Facebook, Zuck & Co. scooped shopping startup Packagd, which was building a shopping product for YouTube and is now working on a Facebook Marketplace product that would allow users to make purchases while watching live stream broadcasts.
- Bezos and co. launched Amazon Live, featuring a never-ending assortment of influencers live streaming from their living room, bedroom, or garage. Watch a minute or two of this live stream from Hayley Segar (and Remy, her kitty) or this one that hawks gadgets and electronics to get the gist of it. As you can see, it’s early days for Amazon Live. The production value of these videos is sorely lacking.
- YouTube has been busy making videos more shoppable as well. They’ve been testing a new feature that displays product prices and recommendations under videos and making the purchase just a Google Shopping click away. And, of course, you could always go old school and buy from the QVC or HSN live stream on YouTube.
theCLIKK’s Take: The question remains, will consumers really tune in for—what amounts to— commercials? It remains to be seen. But then again, you did buy that $500 Vitamix so…
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