Sam Blumenthal

Livestreaming e-commerce users in China came in at around 309 million as of June, roughly one-third of the total number of internet users in the country, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center in September.

Not all ad dollars are equal. While an Amazon seller’s advertising success will obviously vary based on the product they sell and their ad budget, some ads and ad strategies do reveal higher return on ad spend: sponsored brands, close and loose match ad targeting, pricing within the $21-30 range, and implementing a fixed bidding strategy (depending... See more

In a time when shoppers are wary of being in physical shopping centers due to the pandemic, retailers, brands and social media apps have all jumped on the shoppable live content playing field in some way. In recent months, Nordstrom announced over 50 interactive livestream events, Facebook partnered with Anne Klein to debut its live in-app shopping... See more

Douyin Livestream Emerges As The New Capital For DTC Brands. Inside Douyin livestreaming: The difference between social commerce and traditional e-commerce is that social commerce is largely developed around social content, instead of the product. Douyin boasts 600 million daily active users with strong purchasing power. Douyin livestream... See more

From 2019 to 2020, deepfake videos grew 6,820x (!), from 14,678 videos to 100 million videos. They began to invade mainstream internet platforms. Tom Cruise, for example, isn’t on TikTok. But you’d be forgiven for thinking he is: the account @deeptomcruise posts (very convincing) deepfakes of Tom Cruise.

Pinterest’s latest new social commerce update gives influencers the ability to add shopping links within its Instagram Stories-style Idea Pins post format. As of July 27, talent (which Pinterest calls creators) can disclose paid partnerships and add tags to featured products that are in the platform’s product catalog, which was expanded by a... See more

When it comes to buying, more buyers can be validating. Unlike the rise of social vertical communities—a promising trend in its own right—the success of a shopatainment platform isn’t about fostering community and intimacy among a small group of fellow shoppers. Shopatainment is a numbers game, where seeing more shoppers purchase a product helps... See more