The shoppability trend rolls on… now in living color. Among media formats gaining direct transactional capabilities, video is perhaps the most opportune. We’re talking everything from QVC-style YouTube videos to OTT and streaming content. These join social feeds in the ongoing shoppability movement.
Beyond video’s greater dimension to characterize products, there’s the opportunity for contextual relevance (think: product placement). And that’s an area that currently enjoys tailwinds, as we’ve examined, as it’s agood alternative to increasingly-restricted behavioral targeting in the privacy era.
Put another way, streaming video is on a collision course with shoppability. This was validated over the past week with two deals that caught our attention. First, YouTube has collaborated with Shopify for eCommerce integrations, and NBC Universal announced shoppable ads for its Peacock streaming app.
Let’s take those one at a time…
Shopping Destination
Google announced last week that it’s partnering with Shopify to let the latter’s merchants feature products on their YouTube channels. They can take advantage of this integration by linking their Shopify and YouTube accounts, then begin displaying products across their channel and videos.
From a user perspective, they’ll see calls-to-action in places like post-roll end-cards. These promotions will feature current products by syncing with real-time Shopify inventory data. And true to a key tenet of the shoppability movement, users can browse products and transact without leaving YouTube.
Shopify merchants will need a YouTube channel to participate. But if they don’t have one, this could be one way to onboard them. Some may even be inspired to raise their game with respect to video product profiles such as QVC-style livestreams, which is another area YouTube continues to cultivate.
All the above represents an ongoing YouTube effort to be an active shopping destination. As noted, this makes sense because it’s a contextually-natural addition. Given all of the organic product reviews and shopping content on YouTube, the next logical step is to make it all more actionable.
Browse and Buy
Moving on to the NBCU deal, the company has announced that it’s applying its ShoppableTV technology to the popular reality dating show “Love Island USA.” This will allow viewers to scan on-screen QR codes to browse and buy various products and fashion items that are used by contestants in the show.
Notably, these on-screen scans bring users to articles on Peacock’s sister platform E! online, featuring those same products. Though an additional step, the company says that these articles are shoppable, meaning users can then transact natively and on the spot using NBC Universal’s checkout feature.
There are pros and cons to this approach. Bringing users to an online destination has some advantages in user comfort levels in transacting online. However, bouncing users to E! Online to purchase something goes against some eCommerce fundamentals in terms of bloated clickstreams.
In either case, this represents the rise in “T-Commerce,” which involves shopping on your television, as opposed to your laptop. Roku has recently made moves in this area, as we’ve examined, and we expect to see more. The question is if shoppers transact with their mobile device or TV remote.
This UX will continue to develop as consumer proclivities are discovered, including comfort levels with QR codes that flash on your TV screen (Coinbase’s Super Bowl Spot didn’t hurt). We’ll be watching.
