The world is set to get a new online shopping destination. For more than a decade, Amazon has ruled the roost when it comes to global online shopping but it seems that Google also wants a bigger piece of the digital retail pie.
According to a report by News24, the company has been asking several creators to use YouTube software to tag and track products featured in their clips so that it can be linked to their different advertising analytics and shopping tools that will be available via YouTube. While YouTube is not looking to create a storefront of its own – they will be teaming up with Shopify Inc to provide this – the company wants to use its vast catalogue of videos to better target consumers and then ultimately claim some commission for the different items sold as a result of them (assuming creators could potential get more advertising revenue by using the tagging as well).
YouTube is testing this software with select channels for now, but it hopes it can become the next big thing for retail. This will probably be great for creators as it will make more sense for companies to market through the various videos and then track the impact this has on sales. While also adding to YouTube’s coffers too.
It’s easy to see how YouTube could become a big hub for things like this. One example would be watching a movie trailer and then booking a movie ticket through it. Or perhaps you see a product in a video and buy it, or you see a new toy shown off and end up like Darryn with more figurines than space to store them in. Google probably already knows everything about you, now they want to profit off of that even more.
Last Updated: October 13, 2020
