YouTube Launches Its First Official Shopping Channel In South Korea For Direct Trade

JAKARTA - YouTube will launch its first official shopping channel for direct trading in South Korea on June 30. This was reported by Yonhap news agency on Wednesday, June 21.

South Korea already has a fast-growing direct trading business led by tech giant Naver, making it the main test market for the giants as Alphabet's company focuses on becoming more "purchasable".

The new channel will operate in Korean and will start as a project for 90 days. Initially, the channel will provide the company with a direct trading platform and plans to broadcast live shopping content from about 30 brands, Yonhap and other Korean media reported citing sources familiar with this.

"This is YouTube's first official shopping channel in any country," Yonhap said.

"We will probably experiment with various YouTube Shopping features from time to time," a YouTube spokesperson said without providing further explanation.

With YouTube's ad revenue affected by a drop in advertising and competition spending from platforms like TikTok, Google's Chief Business Officer, Philipp Schindler, said in February that there was " GREAT potential to make it easier for people to shop from content creators, brands and content they love".

Naver shares fell 4% on Wednesday morning, while retail Lotte Shopping shares fell 3.3%, compared to the overall market decline of 0.5%.

According to Kyobo Securities, South Korea's direct trading market is expected to grow to 10 trillion won (Rp 116 trillion) this year from 2.8 trillion won in 2021, with Naver currently having around 60% market share.