Nov 22, 2021 - Economy

Twitter to test first live shopping show ahead of Cyber Week

Hope King

Jason Derulo attends LivexLive's Social Gloves: Battle Of The Platforms PPV Livestream at Hard Rock Stadium on June 12, 2021 in Miami Gardens, Florida. — Jason Derulo at Hard Rock Stadium in June in Miami Gardens, Fla. Photo: John Parra/Getty Images

Singer Jason Derulo is set to host a prime-time live shopping show on Twitter on Sunday, just ahead of Cyber Monday and Cyber Week, featuring products from Walmart.

Why it matters: Shoppable video formats sit at the intersection of entertainment, e-commerce and social media — a combination that retailers and tech platforms find hard to resist given how hot each category has grown during the pandemic.

What’s new: The show will be Twitter’s first test of its Live Shopping format, the company announced today.

Viewers will be able to watch the livestream while browsing or buying the products mentioned and tweeting.

The holiday ramp-up: Walmart has been actively testing live shopping formats for about a year — with 15 "shoppable" livestreams since last December on its own website and other platforms including TikTok.

Macy’s, in addition to regular live shopping shows launched earlier this year, is planning Black Friday-focused livestreams starting this Tuesday.

The big picture: Interactive video ads in the form of shopping shows are seen as a way to hook people for longer periods of time and generate more sales.

Twitter now joins YouTube and Facebook in pushing the format of live shopping.

Details: The show starts at 7pm ET Sunday and runs for 30 minutes.

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Twitter to test first live shopping show ahead of Cyber Week

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