Shopify and YouTube have launched YouTube Shopping, a social shopping service that will enable Shopify merchants to easily integrate their online store with one of the world’s biggest entertainment platforms, reaching over 2bn monthly logged-in users.

Shopify merchants can sell their full range of products on YouTube in three ways. YouTube Live enables merchants to tag and pin products at key points during a livestream, with picture-in-picture playback allowing consumers can watch while they check out. Merchants can also show a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand videos. Additionally, a new tab will be added to a merchant’s YouTube channel, featuring their entire selection of products.

Because Shopify acts as a merchant’s retail operating system, product details including names, images, pricing, and shipping are seamlessly kept up-to-date across channels. If a product sells out, it is automatically removed from YouTube. Merchants can track the performance of live and on-demand videos directly from their Shopify dashboard, with a full view of multichannel sales.

“For years, creators have built businesses around their YouTube content, often extending their entrepreneurship into building their own brands, but it hasn’t been as seamless to reach their audience with these products directly on YouTube,” said David Katz, VP of Shopping Product at YouTube. “We’re excited to partner with Shopify to help creators easily bring their stores front and centre for their communities on YouTube, who are increasingly turning to them to shop.” 

Shopify has recently introduced a new era of Connect to Consumer (C2C) commerce. Youtube Shopping is a fast follow to make this vision come to life by offering a direct way for creators and brands to connect to their already active audiences. It builds on the existing foundation of Shopify’s partnership with Google as they extend their commerce collaboration.

YouTube Shopping is available now to Shopify merchants globally.