Just six months since TikTok Shop's rollout in the U.S., YouTube is making products to shop from its creator community easier for consumers to access today. The company is launching several new features with a focus on creators: They will now be able to mass-tag affiliate products across all their videos in the library, and add timestamps to those videos corresponding to their tag. Altogether, these are going to help marketing products through YouTube videos easier and maybe even pump up sales, adding more money to the pocketbooks of the creators.

YouTube has been gradually rolling out more shopping features from its videos over many months, having last year teamed up with Shopify to let merchants add products into videos, expanded livstream shopping features and added shopping features to YouTube Shorts among other efforts.

It is experimenting with even more ways to link its consumers to products creators are showcasing in their videos using the new releases. Using the feature of timestamps, creators can make the shopping button appear at relevant points in their video, such as when they are showing off a favorite gadget or beauty product. YouTube tested the feature in the United States last month and found viewers who saw those timestamps were more than twice as likely to click on tagged merchandise. The feature is only, though, on long-form content, not Shorts. And video has to be at least a minute long, with a maximum of 30 seconds between timestamps, according to YouTube.

The company is also introducing the ability to mass tag affiliate products across a creator's video library based on the products added to the video description. Creators will access the Shopping tab on YouTube Studio to see the list of their videos with the products being mentioned in the description. They can then choose their videos to tag and add new tags, making adjustments and clicking "Save" to finally complete the process. The company says that the new feature will allow creators to monetize videos from their back catalog with high views without any extra effort.

Also, though not currently available, YouTube is hyping new insights and analytics for affiliate products to help creators see things like sales metrics, orders, offer clicks, and impressions from the "Analytics" tab under the "Revenue" and then "Affiliate program" portion of the Studio dashboard.

The changes come as TikTok is increasing its own e-commerce capabilities in the United States - featuring a special shop tab on the home screen, live video shopping, shoppable ads, and affiliate programs for creators.
While many video shopping initiatives are sputtering in the United States, where some startups have failed to get traction, others are just beginning to take shape. For example, TalkShopLive rolled out a new app this week to empower merchants to broadcast on its platform; digital sports and apparel company Fanatics just rolled out a live commerce app; former Amazon execs launched a video shopping app for beauty items (Trendio); and Elon Muks's X  is planning to experiment with live shopping in a partnership with Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media company as part of a broader two-year deal. Even Apple is embracing live shopping to some extent, with a new experience launched earlier this year that connects online shoppers directly to live Apple sales representatives to answer their questions.