YouTube is Launching its First Official Shopping Channel in South Korea

Operating in Korean language, the channel is going to be a 90-day experiment providing a live-commerce platform to over 30 brands

YouTube is reportedly launching its first official shopping channel in South Korea on June 30th. First of its kind, the channel will provide over 30 brands with a live commerce facility, allowing them to demonstrate and sell their products, all through the YouTube shopping channel.

Operating in the Korean language, the YouTube shopping channel is actually a 90-day experiment, containing limited brands and buyer options, however once the experiment goes successful, we might see YouTube releasing official shopping channels in multiple markets.

“We may experiment with a variety of YouTube Shopping features from time to time,” said a YouTube spokesperson while talking about the live commerce experiment.

A fastly growing region, South Korea proved to be the perfect starting place for live commerce testing and experimentation, all because of its already booming live-streaming commerce business established by South Korean tech giant Naver.

Announcements of experimentations in live commerce comes at a time where YouTube alongside multiple other platforms are expecting a sharp competition and regulatory pressure in the advertising business, which obviously is their primary source of revenue.

Naver, which holds about 60% market share in the live commerce market of South Korea experienced a 4% decline after YouTube announcement of the live shopping feature. Do you think YouTube will prove to be a serious competitor once

Google’s Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler while talking about the ecommerce market in February said that there was “lots of potential in making it easier for people to shop from the creators, brands and content they love”.

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