• by Colin Kirkland , April 10, 2024

Approaching spring shopping trends, YouTube is unveiling new in-stream shopping tools in an effort to facilitate new ways for creators to show off products, push more purchase activity, and gain more revenue opportunities in the video-sharing app.

YouTube says its new “Shopping Collections” feature provides creators with a thematic way to curate products from their favorite brands.

The feature -- which is intended to highlight a creator’s tastes in a similar way to a Pinterest board -- may enhance the possibility for more direct promotions, helping creators earn more revenue on the site.

At launch, creators can make Collections on the Studio app on their phone. YouTube says the feature will be coming soon to desktop as well.

YouTube is also launching a new “Affiliate Hub” directly in the app in order to aid creators in finding the latest list of Shopping partners, commission rates, promo codes and request samples from brands they are interested in.

These resources are intended to help creators plan content for their next shoppable video while also bridging the gap between creators and potential brand partners, with the chance to establish new brand partnership deals.

In addition, YouTube is expanding the ability for affiliate shopping creators to tag products across their videos in bulk based on products creators have added to the description. Now, all Shopping creators can tag their own products and merch across their entire video library, opening the doors to more revenue earnings from older content that remains popular with viewers.

Finally, YouTube is adding creator-shopping provider Fourthwall to its list of integrated platforms, which may provide more ways for commerce managers to list their products and create stories directly in YouTube Studio.

As it continues to incorporate more in-stream shopping capabilities like these, YouTube says it is seeing some gains in the commerce realm. In 2023, YouTube users watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos in the app. The company says this marked a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop on the platform.