Navigating Video Commerce in 2025: 15 Questions (and Answers too) to Set You Up for Success

Video helps us with ecommerce too, thankfully those static images and product descriptions are slowly giving way to easy-to-digest videos. 

This is why video  commerce in 2025 is key, particularly shoppable videos. Let’s explore some ground questions to accelerate your video commerce success.

Video commerce refers to the use of digital video content to promote and sell products online. This includes, shoppable videos, 1:1 live commerce, livestream shopping, and other video formats that enable consumers to engage with and purchase products directly through video content. 

• Shoppable Video Snippets: Allows viewers to click on items within the video to make a purchase.
• Livestream Shopping: Features real-time video interactions where viewers can ask questions and buy products during the livestream.
• One-to-One Video: Provides personalized video interactions between a brand representative and a customer, often used for tailored product recommendations.

Study shows that video is 48% more converting that static images.

Why?

Because it’s far more engaging.

Video commerce is crucial because it enhances customer engagement by providing a dynamic and interactive way to showcase products, thereby increasing conversion. According to Wyzowl’s research, 44% of shoppers indicated that they’d most likely watch a short video to learn more about a product compared to 13% that will turn to text-based articles. It allows brands to deliver richer, more detailed product experiences than static images or text descriptions, leading to increased consumer trust and higher conversion rates. Plus, it integrates well with other platforms, like a brand’s ecommerce site, social media, and other marketing channels. The three types of video commerce that are most popular are shoppable video snippets, live shopping and one-to-one shopping, which we have expanded on here. 

The video commerce market is growing rapidly both in the U.S. and globally. As of 2024, the global video commerce market is valued at approximately $14.72 billion and is projected to reach $77.89 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 32.0%. This growth is largely driven by advancements in live streaming, short-form videos, and increased mobile usage.

In the U.S., video commerce is in an earlier stage compared to markets like China. However, it’s expected to expand significantly over the next few years, with major players such as Amazon, TikTok, and Walmart investing heavily in platforms. The U.S. video commerce market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 29.9% from 2024 to 2030, as more retailers and brands leverage this channel to engage customers through interactive shopping experiences​.

• Enhanced Customer Engagement: Video content captures attention more effectively than text or images, leading to higher engagement rates.
• Increased Sales and Conversions: Videos can showcase products in action and provide detailed information in a faster and more engaging way (compared to static images and text), which can lead to more informed purchasing decisions. 
• Immersive Browsing Experience: Provides an immersive browsing experience, showcasing products in action to help consumers make informed decisions.
• Improved Customer Experience: Videos make online shopping more immersive and interactive, bridging the gap between physical and digital shopping experiences.
• Efficient Product Education and Understanding: Delivers comprehensive product information in a visual format, catering to the preference for video over lengthy text. It enhances product understanding through detailed demonstrations, offering a virtual “try-before-you-buy” experience.
• Deeper Consumer Connections: Builds deeper connections with consumers, particularly Gen Z, by fostering authenticity through video.

Like any other marketing strategy, start by objectives and continue with measuring success.

1. Define Goals: Start by defining your video commerce strategy, including your goals and target audience. 
2. Select Platforms: Choose the right video commerce platform that can meet the required needs, like buywith, to create engaging, high-quality video content. 
3. Content Generation: Ensure your platform enables content generation that can be reused in other platforms. For example, buywith’s AI technology enables brands to break down longer livestream shopping videos into bite-sized snippets, complete with subtitles, ready for various platforms. 
4. Repurpose and Reuse Content: Repurpose video commerce content endlessly! Shoppable video snippets can be embedded on product pages, shared on social media, and utilized in paid media campaigns, enhancing their reach and effectiveness. 
5. Measure and Repeat: Incorporate shoppable features into your ecommerce and marketing and analyze performance to continuously refine your approach.

Shoppable video snippets are short, focused video clips that highlight specific features or benefits of a product. They are designed to capture viewers’ attention quickly and can be used in various contexts, such as social media or embedded in product pages.

Shoppable video snippets are thus a powerful tool for brands looking to enhance their video commerce strategy. By repurposing longer live sessions into smaller, engaging snippets, brands can cater to the shorter attention spans of shoppers without the need to create new content. Note that these are engaging clips extracted from longer marketing videos, like live shopping or other marketing materials. Live shopping events for instance last between 30 minutes to an hour, enabling real-time interactions, product demonstrations, and exclusive promotions.

These shoppable video snippets extend the reach of live events to audiences who may have missed the original broadcast, while also offering an interactive way to showcase product features. The engaging nature of video content drives higher conversion rates and boosts engagement compared to static images or text.

Integrate video commerce in 2025 by embedding shoppable videos and livestreams into your website and social media channels. Ensure your videos are optimized for engagement, include clear calls-to-action, and analyze performance metrics to adjust your strategy as needed.

• Product pages: Embedding videos product pages gives an interactive and informative experience in a format that is more engaging than lengthy product descriptions, instructions, static images, how to’s, etc.
• Other Website Placements: such as your homepage or category pages, depending on if the video is for awareness (branding videos) or consideration phases (product demos) in different stages of the marketing funnel.
• Social Media: Social media teams often struggle to create fresh content. Sharing videos here can boost engagement and reach, and save time for marketers creating content!
• Paid Media: Incorporating videos into paid media campaigns offers an engaging ad creative and format that can capture attention and drive conversions.
• Email and SMS Marketing: Including videos in email or SMS campaigns increases click-through rates and engagement, dynamically showcasing products to consumers.
• Overall Content Marketing: Utilizing videos in blog posts and articles enriches storytelling, vividly illustrating product features and benefits.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help to measure the success of video commerce, and are as follows. 

• Gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of products sold via an e-commerce platform
• Conversion rates (depending on where its used, these could be related to website traffic, increased followers, downloads or purchases, etc.), which also should factor in Return Rates
• Average order value as a measure of overall sales generated from video content
• Viewer engagement rates
• Click-through rates and bounce rates
• Average watch time and view through rates
• Overall reach, i.e. the number of unique visitors who have viewed the content

In 2024, video commerce platforms are popular due to their ability to deliver engaging, interactive shopping experiences that resonate with modern consumers. The rise of mobile commerce and the demand for authentic, real-time interactions have driven the growth of video commerce. Video commerce platforms are key as they enable robust capabilities and enable different types of video commerce solutions to be hosted and delivered to them. These in turn deliver analytics, measurement, enable optimizations, APIs and overall are the enabler in driving sales and conversions, etc.  

• Going into it without an Objective: Like any other marketing strategy, there has to be a goal with video commerce. Whether it is enhancing the user experience on product pages, education or entertaining customers through videos, or showcasing features, it is important to have a goal in mind versus just going into creating videos because everyone else is doing it.
• Low-Quality Production: Poor video quality can deter viewers and damage brand credibility. Invest in good production values to create professional and engaging content, like buywith, where you can get high quality with a simple smartphone camera.
• Poor Edited Videos: Similarly, the appeal of videos is also a challenge, as they need to be well cut and edited to be appealing, and draw users in, using the ‘3 second rule’. Having a hook or an appealing lure to pull users in is key. 
• Using Videos Inadequately: While videos can help explain product benefits, offer insights on the product, engage via influencers, etc., they might be confusing if overtly used in replacement of a brand image or in regulated environments. 
• Ignoring Data Insights: Failing to analyze performance data can lead to missed opportunities for optimization. Use insights to refine your video commerce strategy and improve results.
• Unclear Calls to Action: Not having a call to action or a button to help viewers buy the product, which misses the point of why a shoppable video snippet is short or what it leads to.

Leverage Instagram’s shoppable video features to showcase products in an engaging way. Use Instagram Stories, Reels, and Live to create interactive content that allows viewers to purchase directly from the video. Engage with your audience through comments and live interactions to build a stronger connection.

With buywith’s multistreaming feature, you can also get all the awesome interactive browsing and efficient shopping solutions that everyone already loves plus the power to reach social media audiences far and wide. For example, if you create a live shopping event in the buywith platform and set it to stream to Instagram, for example, the event will be created automatically and notify your social media followers of the same. This automation removes the learning curve of audiences on social media platforms from doing anything off platform, which is a win-win for brands.

Businesses can boost sales on TikTok Shop by leveraging TikTok’s engaging short-form video and livestreaming features to showcase products in creative, authentic ways. Repurposing popular livestream segments or longer form videos using buywith’s proprietary AI technology to automatically cut them into attractive and engaging shoppable video snippets is a great option. These newly created TikTok clips can keep product content fresh and visible to new viewers, amplifying reach and boosting conversions across the platform. With shoppable videos, brands can seamlessly lead users from discovery to purchase within the app, minimizing friction in the buying journey.

Businesses can use YouTube’s shoppable videos and livestreams to highlight products and provide detailed demonstrations. Utilize YouTube’s extensive reach and targeting options to attract a relevant audience, and include clickable links in video descriptions and overlays to facilitate purchases.

A platform like buywith, which already multistreams live shopping events, can firstly project any event onto YouTube. Businesses can further expand the reach by converting a longer YouTube video into shorter YouTube shorts, which link directly to the video and original source, thereby magnifying the reach of the videos and overall video commerce platform.

The future of video commerce in 2024 is gradually becoming the new standard for all things shopping and e-commerce. Every social media platform, e-commerce site, product pages, and more, have videos embedded in them, many being shoppable. In a few years, video commerce is likely to involve more advanced technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), providing even more immersive shopping experiences. These may become more mainstream in the coming years but are not adopted yet by larger audiences in terms of shopping. Integration with AI for personalized content and improved real-time interactions will also play a significant role.

And then there is the long form versus shorter form videos. While YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Tiktoks have made shorter videos a mainstay, giving rise to shoppable video snippets, these indeed offer a versatile and effective solution to showcase products and features and more in a shorter duration. However, the same platforms of YouTube and TikTok, alongside livestream shopping, also have longer videos as an option to showcase expertise, partner with influencers, and host brand founders or experts, making longer videos a mainstay too. Both will likely coexist in the future as staples of video commerce experiences.