YouTube May Soon Let You Buy Products Directly From its Platform

Google is once again trying a new venture, this time by placing shopping links under the YouTube videos. According to The Information Magazine, the company is testing this new feature by displaying links of products and their prices to recommend it to YouTube viewers.

Nike videos are some of the initial videos where the test ads have been spotted and clicking them leads to Google Express market place, to buy the product.

Company is working to boost its shopping business, as at the beginning of this year, Google experimented by displaying shoppable ads in images search. Following this, many other retailers have shown interest in joining hands with Google.

Ads have been the main source of collecting revenue for Google but Amazon is beating Google in ads business which urged the company to try other streams to generate revenue.
"Google is also telling smaller retailers that it has no plans to become a retailer in its own right, with the clear subtext that it will be a better partner than Amazon, which acts as a marketplace for small merchants but also is a major retailer. By taking these steps, Google is hoping to use its strengths in text and image search and YouTube video to build its shopping business. “It’s really hard to unseat Amazon,” one former employee said. “Google’s trying to find angles that aren’t covered.” Google’s moves come as its core advertising business shows signs of slowing, putting pressure on it to find new areas of growth, including shopping.", explained Priya Anand.
The recent revenue announcement for physical product sale by the parent company of Google, Alphabet, has indicated at the potential growth in this business.


Amazon is leading even on the retail income, as Google managed to earn less than $1 billion last year whereas alone in North America, Amazon generated $141 billion in 2018.

Along with the I/O conference next week, Google will also, be hosting Google Marketing Live event by the end of this month.

The video platform, YouTube already experimented with such initiatives, as last year it allowed creators to add their products’ links under their videos. But the company have to be little careful this time. It was fined $2.7 billion in 2017 by EU antitrust authorities for ranking its own products higher in the search results.

Google is working on shopping links feature under YouTube videos
Photo: Foursquare / Xiao Ma

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