Roku Announces Live-Shopping Partnership With Shopify

Roku stock jumped 10% today after announcing it is partnering with Shopify to give users the ability to purchase products from Shopify merchants through their TVs, the hardware company announced Tuesday.

“Upon seeing an ad for a Shopify merchant, viewers can simply press OK on their Roku remote to learn more about the product and purchase it directly from their TV. They will be able to check out with Roku Pay, Roku’s payments platform, and return to their streaming experience once they have completed the purchase,” says an official statement from Roku.

The program is an evolution of a 2021 marketing app for Shopify merchants, allowing them to build, purchase, and measure TV streaming ad campaigns. At the time, the company said it was the first TV streaming app available in the Shopify App Store.

The announcement comes two months after Roku revealed new ad products at the 2023 IAB NewFronts presentation, including AI capability searches that match a brand’s message and place their ads in real time.

Three brands — True Classic, the men’s apparel brand; wellness company Olly and the game-based connected rower Ergatta — have signed on as initial partners. Roku is currently alpha testing the shoppable ads with these partners, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

“Offering a great purchase experience for customers and having sound channel measurement are critical to True Classic’s success,” commented Paige Becker, Vice President, Growth at True Classic. “Roku Action Ads address both these needs, providing a frictionless path to purchase for customers while allowing us to measure the impact of this strategy with the end-to-end Shopify integration. Merging performance-based tactics with the scale of TV is a win-win, and we are excited to explore Roku’s innovation.”

Livestream Shopping

The deeper push comes after growth in similar experiences offered by Amazon, YouTube, Alibaba and TikTok.

At 35% of the market, Alibaba’s Taobao Live remains the world’s biggest live shopping player.

On Amazon Live, influencers pitch products live from the intimacy of their own homes. Audiences can react with emojis or stars. A chat window lets them ask questions that the host can answer live, and there’s an embedded link for every product to streamline purchases.

ByteDance-owned TikTok partnered with Walmart for an hour-long livestream in 2020 where TikTok users could buy Walmart fashion items featured by creators. The duo did another livestream in 2021 after reporting the first event netted seven times more views than expected and grew Walmart’s TikTok following by 25%.

But shoppers on TikTok in the U.S. currently have to navigate away from the app to make a purchase, eliminating a big potential revenue stream. In the fall, TikTok started U.S. testing of a new function called TikTok Shop that allows users to buy directly in the app.

There are also a handful of startups developing new U.S. platforms devoted entirely to live shopping.The biggest among them is TalkShopLive, where Walmart held 150 live-shopping events in 2022 and celebrities like Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey and Tim Tebow have gone live.

Meta, on the other hand, is scaling back its focus on shopping. It halted live shopping on Facebook in October and removed the Shop tab from Instagram’s navigation bar earlier this month.