YouTube has expanded its relationship with Shopify, allowing more merchants to make their products available for creators to tag in their shopping content. All eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the U.S. are now able to sign up for YouTube Shopping’s affiliate program through the Google & YouTube app on Shopify, which is expected to significantly increase the number of participating brands and products. According to YouTube, viewers watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos in 2023. Broadening the scope of its Shopify deal is expected to make YouTube more competitive with TikTok Shop.

“The YouTube Shopping affiliate program gives creators a way to earn money through their videos while helping their audience find new products. For brands, it’s another way to reach customers and increase sales,” reports TechCrunch.

YouTube explains in a blog post that the upside for Shopify merchants is the ability to “join the ranks of hundreds of U.S. brands using the YouTube Shopping affiliate program to enable thousands of eligible creators to showcase your products at scale.” Program management, analytics, content and inventory can be managed “right from Google Merchant Center.”

TikTok has also been focused on building its shopping business, reporting in April that it had more than 500,000 participating U.S. merchants. TechCrunch reports TikTok parent ByteDance is aiming to grow its U.S. TikTok Shop business “tenfold to $17.5 billion this year.”

Separately, YouTube is rolling out a new Chrome extension that allows U.S. creators in its Shopping affiliate program to save products from a brand or retail site so it can be easily retrieved when they’re ready to add tags in YouTube Studio.

The YouTube Shopping extension allows participating creators to see, in-app, how much they could potentially earn from tagging a product, PYMNTS notes.

YouTube and Shopify initially teamed in July 2022 on a plan that allowed creators and merchants to integrate Shopify stores with YouTube Shopping. The shopping functionalities allowed creators and merchants to feature sellable products over live streams, in videos and through their store tab.

YouTube’s further shopification comes during a year of robust activity in the space. In April, Amazon Live announced a shoppable channel called FAST Channel on Prime Video and Amazon Freevee, allowing viewers to shop and explore the content they’re watching.

“Also in April, Paramount partnered with artificial intelligence-powered retail media platform Shopsense AI to integrate mobile shopping opportunities into its televised and streamed content, PYMNTS says, adding that “the solution is designed to help traditional entertainment companies hold their own amid the rise of commerce-integrated media.”

On a Get Started page, YouTube shares details on how to sign up for the program, which it says lets brands “tap into established creators” in order to “drive more sales without a heavy lift.”