What's old is new: Brands craving connection with consumers turn to livestreaming

For The New Optimists, livestreaming will continue to be a dominant shopping option. Why? This is a highly social, on-the-go group, and livestream allows them to interact and shop virtually anywhere. This form of conversational commerce is mainstream in China (livestream shopping generated $4.4bn in sales in 2018), Japan, Southeast Asia and South K... 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

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

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

“A major trend going forward will be elevated livestream experiences,” said Alibaba Group Vice President Yu Feng, who oversees content e-commerce at Taobao. “More and more consumers have adopted livestreaming as a way to shop. It has become an irreversible trend and, at the same time, an increasingly competitive space.”