Ecommerce as Video’s Killer App | Andreessen Horowitz

While this motivation may be latent—even subconscious, for most—in the U.S., it’s an economic driver that’s well understood in China, fueling a thriving video ecommerce market. In Asia, the powerful force of video entertainment shopping has spawned a livestream ecommerce industry akin to professional movie production. It’s more than a place where a... See more

Experts agree that as live video shopping evolves, the apps most likely to succeed will be those that can nurture fervent engagement with their creators. “Larger platforms will copy features, so livestreaming as the value proposition will not be enough,” said Rachel Tipograph, founder and CEO of Mikmak, an e-commerce marketing platform whose client... See more

Livestreaming as a medium is a conflation of a product as well as as a distribution channel. It exists on a spectrum of being pure entertainment on one-side and a new go-to-market strategies on the other, with different kinds of monetisation models for each side. While western startups have centred around the 'livestreaming as product' theme, China... See more

Already the norm in Asia, Coresight Research predicts that the livestream shopping market is poised to reach $6 billion this year and $25 billion by 2023. In the social media space, Facebook, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube are turning to e-commerce and affiliate marketing as another means of monetizing content creators, whose videos garner hundred... See more

China has successfully integrated multimedia content with shopping platforms, a feat that the US is only starting to crack with initiatives like Instagram’s Shops and Shopify’s competitor Shop.