Livestream Shopping in the US Awaits Its Breakout Creator Era

The runaway success of livestream commerce in China has made headlines in the U.S., but replicating that magic has so far been thwarted by back-end tech challenges, changing user behavior and talent issues. There are many differences between the markets in China and the U.S.—more evolved tech platforms and higher rates of mobile commerce, to name two—but there are hints that livestreaming is taking hold, despite platforms like Meta rolling back Facebook’s version of live shopping in August 2022 to focus on Reels as more people use the short-form format. TikTok’s introduction of Shop in the U.S. in September 2023 presents the most significant new opportunity, as parent company Bytedance hopes to replicate some of the success it’s had in China with TikTok's cousin, short-form video app Douyin. “There’s a huge interest [from marketers] in video; livestreaming is a part of that,” Sky Canaves, senior analyst for retail and ecommerce at Insider Intelligence. “If more creator talent around livestreaming takes up, brands could start paying more attention to that." Retailers, brands and publishers have dabbled in livestream commerce over the last few years, including efforts from BuzzFeed and Cosmo, to Amazon Live and Walmart’s partnership with platforms like TalkShopLive, and creator-led channels at Saks, Zappos and Nordstrom. While growth can still accelerate, and shopper behavior continues to change, the stuttering suggests live shopping's earlier hype stems from a pandemic-era trend that might have been overblown. Twitch Quietly Ends Partnerships With Rolling Stone, Complex, Vice Breakout creator stars TikTok Shop has 200,000 merchants and 100,000 creators selling via its affiliate program, per Modern Retail’s January report. Nurturing that creator pipeline is crucial since viral success comes down to talent. It’s likely more brands will start taking notice and aligning themselves with creators when there are more break-out success cases. “The association with direct sales might be a little cringy for U.S. creators,” said Canaves, suggesting the explicit tie to selling products might be less palatable. Where creators are currently making money on TikTok is through acting as non-playable characters (NPCs), derived from video games where creators perform as background characters from popular games, acting out repetitive phrases for gifts. In July, Montréal-based creator PinkyDoll told The New York Times that she made between $2,000 and $3,000 per livestream from in-app gifts that trigger mechanical responses. This kind of tipping, still a pretty nascent revenue stream in the U.S., was taking hold in China in 2015, said Canaves. Yet the growth of TikTok Shop, which doesn't break out how much of its sales are through livestreaming, is still very much on TikTok’s growth roadmap this year. We’re already seeing examples where TikTok is aching for commerce content to promote, and smaller DTC brands are finding early adopter success. How else do you explain a stream selling a secondhand pencil reaching more than 1,200 people besides the algorithm funneling audiences to it? Retailer livestreams beat social But while social commerce is gaining more headlines, and more attention from younger audiences who don't search on Google and are more comfortable with livestreaming trends from gaming platforms, it’s just one slice of the pie. Retailers’ livestreaming platforms generate more sales in China currently, with the social commerce share of livestreaming peaking in 2022 at 43.9%, per Insider Intelligence. Retailers’ livestreaming efforts like Amazon Live, which launched in 2019, and Walmart Live are still pretty nascent in the U.S. Shoppers have to actively look for them, said Canaves, partly because Amazon encourages more transactional behavior, rather than surfacing new and trending products. Arguably, Amazon could shift shopper behavior by more prominently prioritizing Amazon Live beyond running livestreaming events tied to Prime Day promotions, as long as it has the tech infrastructure in place and brands have enough inventory to manage surges in demand that a viral breakout creator could generate.