YouTube To Introduce Shopping Platform In South Korea
According to Yonhap news agency, YouTube is set to debut its inaugural live commerce shopping channel in South Korea on June 30.
South Korea already has a thriving streaming business led by tech giant Naver, making it the best test market for global heavyweights as the Alphabet-owned company focuses on being “buyable.”
The new channel works in Korean and starts as a 90-day project. Initially, it will provide companies with a live trading platform and plans to stream shopping content from about 30 brands, Yonhap and other Korean media said, citing people familiar with the matter.
It is YouTube’s first official shopping channel in any country, Yonhap said.
“We may experiment with different YouTube Shopping features from time to time,” a YouTube spokesperson said without elaborating.
As advertisers reduce spending and competition from platforms like TikTok will affect YouTube’s ad revenue, Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler said in February that “there’s a lot of potential to make it easier for people to buy from the creators, brands and content they love.”
Shares in Naver were down 4% on Wednesday morning, while retailer Lotte Shopping fell 3.3%, compared with a 0.5% drop in the broader market.
South Korea’s live-commerce market is forecast to grow to 10 trillion won ($7.7 billion) this year from 2.8 trillion won in 2021, and Naver currently has about a 60 percent market share, according to Kyobo Securities.
