YouTube to launch its 1st-ever official shopping channel this month

Seoul, June 21

Google-owned YouTube will launch its official shopping channel in South Korea for live commerce later this month for the first time in the world, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The new channel, set to open on June 30, will provide a live commerce platform to companies and plans to livestream shopping content with about 30 brands at launch, according to the people.

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.

Last year, YouTube rolled out a new shopping tab in its Explore section, allowing eligible creators to tag products in their livestreams or list products under their videos, and viewers to purchase those products.

During Alphabet's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call, Philipp Schindler, the chief business officer of the company, said Alphabet 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. Alphabet is the parent company of Google and YouTube.

"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 March quarter -- third quarter in a row that its ad revenue has decreased.

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 Shorts as watch time and monetisation is "progressing nicely".

"People are engaging and converting on ads across Shorts at increasing rates," according to Schindler.