I want to run livestreams for my brand, where do I start? — A deep dive into incumbent platforms (part 1a)

Livestream Commerce — the next retail revolution

What’s the next revolution of retail in the U.S.? China’s rapid embrace of new technologies and online purchases may serve as an indicator for the answer, same way as it did for its innovation and fast adoption in tap payment (Wechat Pay) and short-video content creation (bytedance). Livestream commerce, a huge trend in China last year with endorsement by the central government, combines two eminently addictive behaviors: livestreaming and online shopping with three ingredients: entertainment, commerce, content. For 2–3 hours at a time, influencers, brand reps, and celebrities on platforms like Douyin (China’s Tiktok), Weibo (China’s Twitter), and Taobao (China’s Amazon, owned by Alibaba) introduce products, give demos, share discounts, and exhort viewers to buy. There was effectively $130 billion in sales in 2020 China, up from $63 billion in 2019, and featured heavily in the 11/11 Singles shopping day (Chinese Black Friday.) We will dive deeper into the Chinese livestream industry later, as it is a textbook of how, new technology and trends, while seemingly happen out of blue and by accident, have gone through generations of capital aggregation and deployment.

Meanwhile in the U.S., livestreaming still remains mostly in the video game industry and hasn’t really penetrated e-commerce. But given its success in China, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Amazon, as well as a number of startups are getting ready for the trend to hit home.

Examples of Chinese Livestream Commerce during its single day, China’s biggest annual retail sales event

Connie Chan from A16Z believes that,

every successful future online retailer will one day rely on video over traditional photo-based listings

Livestreaming helps sellers form deeper connections with their customers and provides a social layer to the purchasing behavior, coupled with limited-time offers and giveaways, creating a FOMO effect to propel the purchase.

As a DTC brand, there is no better time to start building out your livestream capabilities and connecting to your customers via livestream than now.

Haloy is a NYC based start-up that provides the first end-to-end service for hosting livestreams with brands’ choices of livestreamers. In this article, we will provide our opinions on the current traditional livestream platforms and help you navigate the livestream commerce space. If you have more questions or want us to help you run your livestream show instead, please feel free to visit our website www.haloy.live and email us from there! Please note that the livestream space is still in its infancy and constantly evolving, and this is just a snapshot of the current U.S. landscape. We will also dive deeper into other new livestream commerce platforms next time!

A Deep Dive into Incumbent Social Network Platforms

Facebook Live

In April 2016, Facebook launched Facebook Live, a live video streaming service that lets anyone broadcast from their mobile devices straight to their Facebook. Even though Facebook has seen daily active user decline in the U.S. and Canada, videos have seen 3 times the engagement compared to traditional videos on FB. Facebook Live started as a mobile-only broadcasting feature, but now, Facebook Pages can broadcast from desktop computers as well.

What do we love about Facebook live:

• It allows a wider reach of audiences if people are commenting on the show because when viewers make comments, their comments will be shown on the feed of their FB friends.
• Facebook has advanced performance analytics features that help you analyze live-streaming video-specific metrics such as minutes viewed, unique viewers, average % completion, peak live viewers, total views, average watch time, people reached and even the demographics of who watched the video. You could even get a graphic of the above metrics over the time streamed.
• You can run test mode before going live and crop the video before publishing
• The admin can easily ping comments from a different device, allowing smooth collaboration amongst sales team
• It’s both mobile and laptop friendly

What do we NOT like about Facebook Live:

• The largest demographics of FB is 25–34 years and it has seen steady decline of daily active users in U.S. and Canada. It can be a struggle to get viewers if you don’t have a strong fan base to start with or if your target audience is American/ Canadian gen Z. To learn more about FB active user data to determine if this is the right medium for you, you can check out this article.
• Since viewers’ comments will be publicly available to their friends’ feeds, people are less likely to comment and engage during the show (one coin two sides!)
• FB doesn’t have the checkout feature for products even though it does have FB commerce and as a host, you will have to use ‘ping comments’ feature to indicate to viewers which products you are showing. Sellers have been asking viewers to comment a number as an indication of buying interest, followed by sales reps reaching out to the customers.

An Example of Facebook Live

Instagram Live

Instagram started insta-stories in August 2016, with Live Stories later added in November 2016, following the footsteps of FB. Instagram Live Shopping is a new way for brands and creators to sell products during an Instagram Live broadcast. Featured products are shown at the bottom of the live broadcast screen, so viewers can easily tap to purchase.

What we love about Instagram Live:

• It is the most natural way for a brand to build its community as your followers and interested audience is already there in many cases. You could add a story with countdown and encourage followers to tap to get a reminder to market the event more smoothly. We also have had success in running giveaway campaigns alongside a livestream event
• All live videos appear at the beginning of Instagram Stories. This ensures that any of your followers who open the app will see you’re live and potentially join in to watch your livestream out of curiosity
• It has new e-commerce feature which lets accounts with access to Instagram Checkout tag products from their Facebook Shop or catalog before going live — providing a new, contextualized and native way to shop on the app
• You can invite other creators or partnered brands/influencers to go live together
• You can turn on features to hide offensive comments

What we do NOT love about Instagram Live:

• Product featuring is not user friendly. You won’t be able to let your team help launch a product feature and will have to do it as a host; moreover, for products with variants, you will have to select a size / color as the featured product, which is counterintuitive for customers
• Your audience is limited to your followers and there’s no other way to increase your reach beside collaborating with other accounts
• At the moment, Instagram Live Shopping is available for accounts using Instagram Checkout, which is limited to eligible US-based brands and creators
• You won’t be able to crop the videos before posting to IGTV or run a test mode prior to going live

An example of Instagram Live with its co-creation feature

Amazon Live

The tech and retail giant is definitely not going to be absent for the new round of retail revolution. Amazon launched its first trial of QVC style live stream shopping back in March 2016, namingly Style Code Live, when the fashion-related Amazon products failed to capture its audiences’ attention, it was canned in May 2017. Amazon is taking on the shoptainment game of Amazon Live in 2019. It features live-streamed video shows from Amazon talent as well as those from brands that broadcast their own live streams through a new app, Amazon Live Creator. On the live shows, hosts talk about and demonstrate products available for sale on Amazon, much like they do on QVC. Beneath that sits a carousel where shoppers can browse product details and make purchases.

What we love about Amazon Live:

• It’s easy to set up as long as you are a registered brand with brand registry
• You can go live anytime simply by downloading the Amazon Creator app. The app also allows you to schedule a live session prior to the event and upload event preview picture
• Amazon Live is currently very nascent and it’s likely that your brand will be featured while going live (our clients are featured on the front page both times they are live!). This guarantees some free traffic to your products, albert small in amount

What we do NOT love about Amazon Live:

• The audience is limited to those on Amazon, and amazon buyers don’t yet have the habit of watching live, despite Amazon’s aggressive effort in promoting it
• In general, the marketplace on amazon is less brand-focused but more product-focused. It is hard to craft a brand image since customers tend to go to Amazon for specific products in need and it’s traditionally search-first rather than ‘watch first’
• You will have to either be approved by Amazon as an influencer/creator or be an Amazon professional seller in the U.S., with your brand registered via Amazon. In short, this works best for existing Amazon sellers / influencers

An example of Amazon Live with its influencer program

Overall, we suggest that you start with a platform based on your existing follower base as well as the overall objectives of your livestream show. Below we summarized what we covered in this article into a table.

Overview of Livestream Commerce among Incumbent Players

Haloy is a NYC based start-up that provides the first end-to-end service for hosting livestreams with brands’ choices of livestreamers. If you have more questions or want us to help you run your livestream show instead, please feel free to visit our website www.haloy.live and email us from there!

The views expressed here are those Haloy Technology, L.L.C. personnel quoted and are not the views of Haloy Technology. While taken from sources believed to be reliable and extracted from experiences with client work, Haloy makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.