YouTube announced a partnership with Shopee in Taiwan today (January 29th), officially launching its product launch in Taiwan.YouTube Shopping Affiliate ProgramThe biggest highlight of this feature is that it achieves a seamless "what you see is what you get" shopping experience—allowing viewers to directly click on product tags on the screen while watching videos, short videos, or live streams, and complete browsing and placing orders without leaving the video.
Breaking down the barriers between "seeing" and "buying," you can place an order without switching apps.
In the past, if creators wanted to promote products, they usually had to paste long URLs in the information bar or pin comments. Viewers would then have to leave the YouTube service to complete the purchase process. This "friction" often cooled down the impulse to buy.
The YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program, a collaboration with Shopee, aims to address this pain point:
• Checkout via mother-and-child screen:Clicking the shopping button in the video will bring up a Shopee product page in a parent-child format, allowing viewers to place an order while watching the video without interrupting their viewing experience.
• Precise marking:Creators can directly search for and tag products on Shopee simply by operating in the YouTube Studio backend.
• Short videos are more effective at driving sales:Data shows that adding shopping stickers to Shorts videos increases click-through rates by more than 40% compared to simply using a shopping button.
A new monetization tool for creators: revenue sharing is 5 times that of advertising fees.
This collaboration will be beneficial for content creators who don't have their own brands and don't want to stock up on inventory. As long as they qualify, they can earn commissions by promoting products on Shopee, turning their passion into passive income.
Official data shows that during the short 42-day trial period at the end of last year, more than 60 YouTube channels in Taiwan participated, resulting in approximately 9000 orders.
• Chris Yifeng:During the trial period, the revenue from its alliance program was five times that of traditional advertising, accounting for more than 75% of total revenue.
• The Latest Sheep:For creators specializing in organization and tidying, affiliate revenue already accounts for 60% of the channel's total income.
• My Dream Kitchen in My Home:The cooking channel saw weekly revenue growth exceeding 200%.
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YouTube emphasizes that this program is currently only open to "eligible and well-documented" creators, and the products they tag must comply with both Google and Shopee's policies to ensure transaction security.
Analysis of viewpoints
For YouTube, this is a crucial step in monetizing its massive traffic. Faced with the aggressive expansion of TikTok Shop globally (not yet fully operational in Taiwan), YouTube must prove that it can not only get viewers to "watch," but also get them to "buy."
For Shopee, this solves the biggest headache for e-commerce: "traffic costs." By leveraging the endorsement and trust of YouTube creators, it can more accurately reach potential buyers and is more effective than simply running ads. In addition, it can increase product sales opportunities through online traffic such as live streaming.
However, for viewers, the future YouTube experience may become more "commercialized." When every unboxing video is tagged with shopping labels, how creators strike a balance between "honest reviews" and "profit sharing" will be key to maintaining fan trust.
After all, people prefer to see genuine sharing, not 10-minute shopping channel ads.
