TikTok e-commerce rival co-launched by YouTube, Shopee about to debut in Vietnam

YouTube Shopping, a new e-commerce platform initially co-launched by Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and Singapore-headquartered Shopee in Indonesia, is set to expand to Vietnam and Thailand in the coming weeks.

YouTube Shopping will enable YouTube users to purchase products viewed on the video platform by clicking on links to Shopee, the firm’s executives told Reuters.

With the partnership, YouTube continues to enhance its digital growth ambitions in Southern Asia in a move that will see the giant directly compete with TikTok after the latter’s acquisition of Indonesia’s biggest e-commerce platform Tokopedia.

Commenting on the news, a marketing expert, who declined to be named, said that the move could be considered a turning point in the development of both YouTube and Shopee, as part of their efforts to curb the expansion of the e-commerce platform TikTok Shop.

YouTube has a vast user base, but until now, the platform seems to have overlooked the “gold mine” of e-commerce, focusing primarily on revenue from advertising and membership subscriptions. This recent shift suggests that YouTube is now attempting to catch up with the trend of integrating e-commerce into short-video platforms. Meanwhile, although Shopee continues to lead in e-commerce, its position is being defied by TikTok Shop, he explained.

In Vietnam, shoppers spent VND87.37 trillion ($3.56 billion) on four major e-commerce platforms – Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, and Tiki – in the second quarter of this year, marking a 10.4% increase from Q1, according to the e-commerce research platform YouNet ECI.

Of the total, transactions on Shopee accounted for VND62.38 trillion ($2.54 billion), representing 71.4% of the market share. TikTok Shop followed with VND19.24 trillion ($784.19 million), or 22%. Lazada and Tiki recorded VND5.16 trillion ($210.3 million), or 5.9%, and VND584 billion ($23.8 million), or 0.7%, respectively.

In the first six months of this year, transaction values on Shopee and TikTok Shop reached VND116.12 trillion ($4.73 billion) and VND37.6 trillion ($1.53 billion), representing 69.7% and 22.6% of the market share, respectively.