YouTube launches new Shopping features to help creators market products and grow their earnings

Aisha Malik
Updated ·2 min read

YouTube announced on Tuesday that it's launching new Shopping features that allow creators to curate shoppable collections, better plan their shoppable videos, quickly monetize older videos and more.

The launch of the new features come as TikTok Shop is seeking to take on YouTube Shopping and other competitors in the space. TikTok is reportedly aiming to grow the size of its TikTok Shop U.S. business tenfold, to as much as $17.5 billion this year.

YouTube is launching "Shopping Collections" to allow creators to curate products from their favorite brands for users to browse through. Creators can pick a selection of products based on a theme, such as an everyday makeup look or a capsule wardrobe. The collections will appear in a creator's product list, Store tab and video description. At launch, creators will be able to make Collections on the Studio app on their phone. YouTube plans to launch the feature on desktop soon.

Image Credits: YouTube

In addition, YouTube is launching a new Affiliate Hub in its app to make it easier for creators to find information about the latest list of Shopping partners, competitive commission rates and promo codes. Creators will also be able to use the hub to request samples from top brands. YouTube says the idea behind the new hub is to make it easier for creators to plan their next shoppable video.

YouTube is also adding Fourthwall, a website builder that helps creators build shops, to its list of integrated platforms. By allowing users to connect their Fourthwall shop, YouTube is making it easier for users to create and manage their content directly in YouTube Studio. YouTube already offers integrations with Shopify, Spreadshop and Spring.

Image Credits: YouTube

Last year, YouTube launched features that allow creators to tag products across their video library in bulk based on products added to the video’s description. YouTube is now expanding this feature to all Shopping creators. The company notes that this feature can help creators earn more revenue from their older content if it's still getting high traffic.

As part of Tuesday's announcement, YouTube revealed that users watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos in 2023. The platform saw a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop on YouTube.