YouTube Shorts Updated With Shopping Features to Combat Ad Slowdown

YouTube said on Tuesday it is bringing shopping features to its TikTok-like short-form video service, as the Alphabet-owned company looks to fortify its revenue against a drop in spending by recession-wary advertisers. The feature, being tested with eligible creators in the US, will allow them to tag products from their own stores. "Viewers in the US, India, Brazil, Canada, and Australia can see the tags and interact with them and we'll continue to bring tagging to more creators and geographies," a Google spokesperson said.

The company's plan to expand shopping features to YouTube Shorts was previously reported on Tuesday.

The streaming service is also testing new commission schemes for influencers who sell products through links in videos.

This comes months after YouTube unveiled a new way for creators to make money on short-form videos, introducing advertising on its video feature Shorts and giving video creators 45 percent of the revenue.

The internet's dominant video site has struggled to compete with TikTok, the app that got its start hosting lip-sync and dance videos before burgeoning to 1 billion monthly users.

Earlier this month, the company announced that YouTube Shorts was being rolled out to smart TV screens with a player that was optimised for the big screen. The firm explained that YouTube Shorts on TV will come with the video centred with a white border along with a background theme that is based on the Shorts clip's main colour. Details of the Shorts will appear on the side of the video.

YouTube Shorts on a smart TV will not autoplay videos and users will have to manually go to the next Shorts by using the remote, according to the company, which tested multiple designs like the Jukebox style where multiple Shorts would fill the screen at the same time. This was ruled out as the design option strayed too far from the essence of Shorts, which features one video at a time, according to the Alphabet-owned firm.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

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