StoryStream Taps Into Video Commerce Trend With Live Shopping Tool

Visual commerce platform StoryStream is tapping into a growing consumer demand for live video shopping.

The London-based company announced the launch of its video shopping tool Thursday (March 16), saying it had tested the product with brands that include Braun, Lancome, and Oral-B.

“With video playing an increasingly central role in the marketing strategy of brands and retailers, Live Video Shopping represents a critical development in the humanising of eCommerce,” StoryStream said in a news release.

The company says its new platform lets online retails integrate live video shopping into their eCommerce cites to give customers a more engaging experience.

That means hosting events that let customers “interact with hosts in real-time, ask questions, and make purchases directly from the video stream,” the release said, adding that the platform also includes things like emoji reactions and real-time analytics.

As PYMNTS wrote last month, a number of companies — including a few of the world’s tech giants — have begun pursuing livestream shopping as the “next best bet for online selling.”

For example, the sports merchandise eCommerce firm Fanatics recently hired former Alphabet and Snap executive Nick Bell as CEO of its new Fanatics Live division.

“We see a big opportunity here to create entertaining commerce experiences because that brings people together and really opens up the collector market to a much wider base of fans,” Bell said. “We want the commerce aspect of this to be the byproduct of entertainment.”

Also delving deeper into this space are companies such as Meta and Alphabet’s YouTube.

On the Alphabet Q4 2022 earnings call last month, CEO Sundar Pichai said YouTube shorts were averaging more than 50 billion views a day, up from 30 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

Livestream shopping also featured prominently in Meta’s recent earnings report, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling analysts and investors that the company has to balance the bigger share of ad dollars from Feed against the rising popularity of Reels.

Zuckerberg said his company’s challenge is improving monetization, the efficiency or the revenue generated for each minute of Reels viewed.

“Currently, the monetization efficiency of Reels is much less than Feed,” he said. “So, the more that Reels grows, even though it adds engagement to the system overall, it takes some time away from Feed and we actually lose money.”

Meanwhile, Apple this week launched a new  live shopping effort with the debut of “Shop with a Specialist over Video,” which allows customers who want to purchase iPhones to communicate via video with a salesperson, browse new phones and learn about trade-ins and financing.

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