Competing with Amazon, Google and Facebook are aggressively moving into live shopping

This year, the biggest names in tech are throwing their weight behind livestream shopping.

In 2021 , live shopping has become the focus of large technology companies' entry into e-commerce . In the past year , giant platforms such as Meta (formerly Facebook), TikTok, and Google's YouTube have cooperated with retail giants such as Macy's and Walmart to promote live shopping and continuously develop new features. At the same time, users can purchase products on the platform without jumping off the site.

Some analysts believe that these measures are intended to better compete with Amazon . In addition to its status as an e-commerce giant, Amazon has developed its advertising business by virtue of its platform advantages . It is estimated that 40% to 70% of product searches in the United States start on Amazon. According to the company's financial report, the revenue of the "other" business unit , which mainly consists of advertising, increased by 77% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021 to more than US$6.9 billion, exceeding the advertising sales of Snap, Twitter and Pinterest.

Amazon's advertising business poses a huge threat to Google and Facebook . In terms of purchase conversion , Google and Facebook lag far behind Amazon. Last year, both companies began to add live streaming features to their e-commerce businesses and continued to increase investment to improve purchase conversion rates .

Yulie, Vice President of Product Management Business at Facebook   Kwon Kim said Facebook 's parent company is delegating teams from Facebook and Instagram's engineering, marketing and marketing departments to build new features.

This year, the company began testing online shopping with large companies including Walmart. It also launched Friday live shopping days from May to July . In November , Facebook also held a month-long live shopping series where retailers could communicate with fans on their respective pages .

Meanwhile, YouTube's team is working on adding live shopping capabilities to live videos . In February, YouTube began testing new features in the U.S. that allow viewers to buy products in on-demand videos, and later expanded the feature to live broadcasts in the summer. In addition to the U.S., YouTube has also tested these features in India and Brazil .

YouTube and Facebook both said they were pleased with the initial results, but did not release sales figures . Looking ahead, the companies said they are developing content discovery features and ways to connect brands with creators.

In addition to YouTube and Facebook, TikTok has also joined the competition and held its first live shopping event in cooperation with Walmart in December last year . Experts believe that large social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TokTok can fully increase the penetration rate of live shopping in the United States due to their large scale .

Live Shopping

Amazon

Google