YouTube To Launch Its First Official Shopping Channel In South Korea

YouTube is launching its first official shopping channel for live commerce in South Korea on June 30. Reuters reports: The new channel will operate in Korean language and will start as a 90-day project. In the beginning it will provide a live-commerce platform to companies and plans to livestream shopping content from about 30 brands, Yonhap and other Korean media said, citing people familiar with the matter. It is YouTube's first official shopping channel in any country, Yonhap said.

"We may experiment with a variety of YouTube Shopping features from time to time," a YouTube spokesperson said, without elaborating. With YouTube's ad revenue affected by advertisers curtailing spending and competition from platforms like TikTok, Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said in February there was "lots of potential in making it easier for people to shop from the creators, brands and content they love."

Makes sense

[GeekWithAKnife]

Instead of targeting viewers with ads they will target potential buyers with ads. Is now a good time to say you should only view YouTube for content with an ad blocker and only for the content you intended to prevent algo doom scrolling so you can actually enjoy it?

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Or maybe they're just gathering all the sponsorship segments into one big channel...

Shopping Channel.

[Motleypuss]

If it's anything like cable used to be, it'll be just a bunch of ads. I think I can safely skip anything to do with this abhorrent mistake on YooToob's part.

Re:

[codebase7]

Oh please, my guess is it will be a rip off of Shop 'N Squirtle [youtube.com].