YouTube Takes on TikTok in South Korea, Preps Up For Shopping Channel Debut Amid Competition

Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL YouTube looks to launch its first official shopping channel for live commerce in South Korea on June 30, marking its official shopping channel debut in any country.

The new channel will start as a 90-day project and operate in Korean. 

Initially, it will provide a live-commerce platform to companies and plans to livestream shopping content from about 30 brands, Reuters cites Yonhap news agency.

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YouTube voiced possibilities of experimenting with a variety of YouTube Shopping features.

South Korea's live commerce market will likely reach 10 trillion won ($7.7 billion) in 2023 from 2.8 trillion won in 2021, with Naver Corp NHNCF currently holding about 60% market share, according to Kyobo Securities.

With YouTube's ad revenue affected by advertisers curtailing spending and competition from platforms like TikTok, Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler had expressed the potential of making it easier for people to shop from the creators, brands, and content they love.

Price Action: GOOG shares traded lower by 0.51% at $123.22 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

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