Marketing Briefing: ‘An energetic live bazaar’: As platforms expand live shopping, marketers and agency execs expect advertisers to test the channel

Live shopping is the new black.

In recent weeks, platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest, among others, have announced that live shopping will be featured heavily this holiday season. That these platforms would do so isn’t all that surprising: Amazon experimented with live shopping last year and Chinese-based companies have been offering live shopping for years. Marketers and agency execs say that they expect advertisers to test out the channel more and more this year as it is seen as an experimental but fast-growing channel.

“Live shopping on social [media] has been hugely successful in China and now is making its way to America,” said Nick Meyer, director of social strategy at Campbell Ewald. “What tells me there will be a successful adoption is that live shopping is the technological next step to #TiktokMadeMeBuyIt. Users have been self-identifying as social influenced purchasers for quite some time proving the behavior is there. So by combining the purchase influence of top creators with the ease of in-app click-to-buy features, social commerce has a new wrinkle we need to pay attention to.”

It’s unclear how quickly brands will adopt live shopping but marketers and agency execs say they are looking to experiment there, especially as more platforms add the capability.

“For most consumer brands, live shopping is still in an experimental stage,” said Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism. “For us, it’s appearing in more and more of our recommendations, but only being implemented a handful of times — usually as part of a ‘test’ budget.”

At the same time, with shifts due to Apple’s iOS 14 and the need to diversify, live shopping comes at a time when marketers may be more open to testing it out. “Advertisers targeting capabilities have suffered — so they’re also looking for new sales avenues,” said Gahan.

Aside from targeting capabilities and iOS 14 changes, the rise in costs due to the shift to digital advertising over the last 18 plus months of the pandemic has marketers looking to diversify spending and testing new channels.

“The pandemic caused a disproportionate shift to digital that resulted in significantly higher costs due to increased online competition,” said Mike Feldman, vp and head of commerce and retail media at dentsu. “Advertisers are hungry for new options that are both cost-effective and impactful, and livestream shopping fits that mold. It’s also different given its interactivity as shoppers are getting more product info and personal touch, which leads to better engagement and loyalty on top of sales.”

It’s unclear how quickly marketers will adopt live shopping or the longevity of the feature for advertisers. That said, there are some brands that have been doing live shopping long before the platforms began offering it.

BetaBrand was among them, “staging live, interactive product drops since 2019.” In all, it has already hosted 480 broadcasts, according to CEO and founder Chris Lindland.

“Since last spring, it’s been the only way we’ve launched new products, directing our entire audience via email and SMS to watch and …read more

Source:: Digiday