TikTok has become the latest player to integrate AI shopping into its popular – and increasingly eCommerce-enabled – app. Following recent moves by Shopify and Google towards agentic shopping, this gives users a shopping assistant that makes it easier to buy things across TikTok surfaces.
This takes form in a conversational AI agent that helps TikTok users discover products. And it’s coupled with a new in-app checkout feature that makes it easier to buy things on the spot. This one-two punch – easier product discovery and easier transactions – is hoped to boost transaction volume.
As for functionality and selling points, TikTok says the shopping assistant can understand users’ preferences and personal context, which will guide answers to questions and product recommendations. It will also be versed in product details, shipping info, sizing, and availability.
This functionality will live throughout TikTok’s UX, including videos that have products tagged, and the For You feed. That saturation is meant to make shopping experiences more persistent across TikTok’s app, while stimulating impulse purchases that tap into users’ commercial intent (more on that in a bit)
As for timing and rollout, TikTok says that the new shopping assistant is available immediately. It has also disclosed that its features are being built in partnership with eCommerce platforms and players including Shopify, Stripe and Salesforce. This should position the tool well and elevate its capabilities.
Under TikTok’s Roof
Stepping back for context, TikTok’s shopping efforts go back a few years, mostly involving TikTok Shop. For those unfamiliar, this is the eCommerce functionality in TikTok that’s housed in a dedicated shopping portal, and infused throughout TikTok by tags that creators can add to videos to make them shoppable.
The new AI shopping assistant is more like the latter, in that it brings Shopping beyond a specific eCommerce section or tab – instead making it easier to discover, shop, and transact throughout TikTok. That distinction is important because it taps into TikTok users’ commercial intent across the app.
That commercial intent is something that continues to be a selling point that TikTok leans on in its advertising endeavors. Specifically, it reports that activity on the app generates $81 billion in GDP for U.S. businesses, while 54 million Americans report purchasing products after watching TikTok videos.
TikTok’s efforts to monetize this behavior have kept a consistent thread – keeping users within TikTok instead of sending them elsewhere to transact. This is the case with TikTok Shop and carries through to the latest AI shopping assistant. It’s all about expanding the funnel and keeping it under TikTok’s roof.
The reasons for doing this are fairly obvious in keeping a larger share of affiliate revenues for driving transactions, not to mention greater first-party data to use in its ongoing targeting. For that reason, we expect to see more moves like the above, and project its next play will be shopping that’s more agentic.
