YouTube enhances streaming commerce capabilities

“Everywhere commerce” continues to grow as streaming and social platforms continue to experiment with various ways to drive incremental revenue by making it easier for users to purchase products featured in video. The traditional marketing funnel continues to collapse as more and more platforms shorten the distance between awareness and purchase.

Approaching spring shopping trends, YouTube is unveiling new in-stream shopping tools in an effort to facilitate new ways for creators to show off products, push more purchase activity, and gain more revenue opportunities in the video-sharing app.

YouTube says its new “Shopping Collections” feature provides creators with a thematic way to curate products from their favorite brands.

The feature -- which is intended to highlight a creator’s tastes in a similar way to a Pinterest board -- may enhance the possibility for more direct promotions, helping creators earn more revenue on the site.

At launch, creators can make Collections on the Studio app on their phone. YouTube says the feature will be coming soon to desktop as well.

YouTube is also launching a new “Affiliate Hub” directly in the app in order to aid creators in finding the latest list of Shopping partners, commission rates, promo codes and request samples from brands they are interested in.

Full story at MediaPost.