YouTube videos now allow direct shopping

Giant video-sharing site YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will roll out its newest ad feature, which allows users to directly shop through videos. The new ad unit, dubbed as “Shopping ads,” is an advertising product which the giant tech company will use as a new channel to monetise product-focused video contents.

Google Adwords stated in its blog post that Shopping ads is the newest addition to the giant tech firm’s effort and hardwork in shortening the period from the time when a viewer sees an ad to making an actual purchase. Earlier this year, the video-sharing site launched “Cards,” which let marketers share product information directly within videos across all screens.

Cards has been developed further, which led to the creation of TrueView for Shopping. The tool took it up a notch by enabling marketers to share more information about their brands, relevant videos, and playlists.

With Shopping ads, the feature now lets users show a click-to-buy ad within partner videos on YouTube. This virtually makes marketing videos a digital storefront. Moreover, the businesses only pay Google when a user actually clicks on an ad.

As explained by TechCrunch , the Shopping ads will make YouTube video viewers see an info icon located on the top right corner of the video. Clicking on the icon will bring up related contents, which include product ads. Clicking further on the product ads will reroute the viewer to the merchant’s website.

The move was triggered by a research, which found that video viewership has dramatically increased by 44 per cent, Google, Inc. explained. It expounded that the research also found that the time spent in watching traditional television fell by 10 per cent over the same period.

While the announcement was publicly disclosed by Google during the firm’s Advertising Week, Shopping ads testing will be conducted in the next months.

YouTube Will Soon Be Able to Make Any Video Shopping-Enabled (Credit: YouTube/Wochit News)

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