YouTube Shopping Continues Shopify's Bet On Creators: Is It Worth It?

While YouTube Shopping is SEO for the average brand, it's primarily for the creator whose business is about the videos themselves.

Witness the things YouTube Shopping allows you to do:

- Display products in your channel store (you have a channel store right?)

- also at end screens of videos

- in the product shelf or below your video

- as a pinned product in livestreams

Most traditional brands aren't creating enough video content to make this worthwhile.

It has clearly been a priority for Shopify the last few years to speak to the creator audience. The reason why is pretty clear -- YouTube and Tiktok creators are one of the largest segments of entrepreneurs. If Shopify misses this trend, it misses a lot.

If you're watching, Shopify has done things like:

- Acquired Linkpop to allow links-in-bio shopping from many platform.

- Meta, Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok Shopping integration

- Acquired Dovetale, although this is a brand tool it encourages brand/creator economy

- Shopify also provides studios in major cities for content creation

For the average established brand, they are not even in this same ballgame. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be. After all, video is how to engage a younger mobile-always-on generation.

Furthermore, one of the easiest predictions that you could make about the next 10 years is that the average PDP and website are going to be almost completely motion-enabled (not all will be videos, but simple static pictures will seem quaint).

If you are an Enterprise brand on Shopify, this might even frustrate you because a lot of this development might not apply to you, but you kind of knew this when you signed up for Shopify didn't you?

But then again, a lot of these traditional old-school brands need to modernize. To do that, they need to inject themselves with a new playful soul that makes sense on these video-first channels.

Most are just trying to figure out the basics like Amazon and DTC, much less trying to stay at the leading-edge of DTC.

To them, it just sounds like more expenses ;-)

If you're a smaller brand and wonder, "How do I compete in this world?", that's your edge. Find your audience and speak to them in a way that larger, more established brands cannot even afford to figure out, much less consistently produce for.

Shopify is making a bet: these creators will stick around and invest more in eCommerce, and when that happens they will already be familiar with Shopify's tools. After all, a lot of these creators are "part-time entrepreneurs". Unless they are one of a select few, they are just relying on ads and don't have a full-time contract with a brand, that's not a business. That's a hobby.

In other words, for Shopify this is a similar bet to what Apple used to make for schools -- getting people familiar with your tools early and often is important for developing your market pipeline long-term.