In countries like Brazil—whose retail ecommerce market will account for more than one-third of total retail ecommerce sales in Latin America this year—nearly half of internet users said they would be willing, or very willing, to interact with live commerce, according to February 2022 research published by All iN and Social Miner.

Livestreaming—watching real-time live video content on video streaming platforms, social network sites, and websites—gets a lot of buzz, but it’s not a regular part of social media users’ video viewing habits. The social platforms will attempt to change that this year with new commerce-themed offerings.

In the US and many other countries, livestream shopping has yet to enter the mainstream—not so in China, where commerce and entertainment are deeply intertwined. TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, enables parent company ByteDance to win a slice of the country’s livestreaming ecommerce sales, which will top $470 billion this year. More like this:. Report: TikTok Commerce 2022.

A lot of the questions they ask are, "Oh, is it live? How do I chat? Can you see me?". In terms of brands, in 2017, the Chinese market saw a lot of the major brands not adopting this—a lot of them only adopted live commerce during COVID-19. I'm expecting 2024 to be the year that US brands will be livestreaming or creating a live program as part of their marketing strategy.

Digital Commerce 360. Jungle Scout. MaCher. Publicis Group. Raydiant. Sensormatic Solutions. TikTok. Warc.

Not a natural fit: Despite Twitter’s interest in building out social commerce as a revenue stream, the social media company’s chances of rivaling Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok as a commerce platform to be reckoned with are slim.

Advertisers believed livestreaming, particularly surrounding live commerce events, would be a growth area on social platforms in 2022. However, shopping livestreams have just started to emerge on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube within the past couple of months.

Live shopping is increasingly being used as an entry point to social commerce. Twitter has started testing a livestream shopping feature, while Pinterest recently launched Pinterest TV, which the company describes as “a series of live, original, and shoppable episodes featuring creators right on Pinterest.”.

Digital commerce platform provider Avionos, for instance, was a Gold sponsor of Adobe’s Summit. Sponsoring these partner-hosted events has been the traditional way Avionos goes to market, according to Challin Meink, director of marketing.

For instance, both new and legacy social and ecommerce platforms are scrambling to accommodate the new trend of live streaming commerce videos (“live commerce”), wherein retailers and key opinion leaders (KOLs)—China’s term for influencers—interact with their audiences directly via video, and products are on sale in real time.

Livestreaming was an existing trend that gained newfound relevance during the pandemic. Over the past few months, nearly all of the major US social networks have expanded their services and introduced new livestreaming opportunities, many of which are aimed at boosting commerce on the platforms.

“Many of the country's most popular ecommerce platforms are heavily integrated with the most popular social networks, boasting innovative services like Mini Programs and live streaming commerce. These and other services frequently offer the best deals on products, and they make social buying extremely engaging and convenient.”.

Live means live. The nature of live video means that content cannot exactly be approved in advance or edited after the fact. For these reasons, brands are at the mercy of the talent and technology once the stream goes live. Audience interactions can be harmful. Live chats are an essential part of livestreaming.

Testing the social commerce waters: YouTube began beta-testing live shopping in February and has since hosted live shopping events featuring small businesses and sponsored influencer streams as social media platforms race to launch live shopping features ahead of the holiday shopping rush. Live shopping and other social commerce features are major drivers of revenue in eastern markets.

Here’s how marketers can navigate Q3 2021’s product, commerce, and monetization changes on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter.

JD.com also partnered with museums to offer live streamed tours, which then lead guests to online gift shops. Most recently, the country's major mobile messaging app WeChat launched Minishop, which enables merchants to set up an online store without relying on third-party developers.

Singles’ Day is a must-see for tech watchers, as many of China’s digital giants have used past events to highlight retail tech, including virtual reality (VR) shopping, QR code payments, and livestreaming commerce. A few years ago, Alibaba introduced a Pokémon Go-like game called "Catch the Cat," which featured a virtual cat who drew shoppers to brick-and-mortar stores where they could earn points.

These super apps take a kitchen-sink approach, encompassing as many aspects of users’ lives as possible. As centralized payments and commerce platforms, super apps enable users to do business with a vast number of companies and other consumers through the millions of miniprograms they host.