Walmart continues aggressive livestream shopping growth
Walmart is partnering with yet another livestream shopping platform.
During February 2022, the discount giant is launching eight livestream shopping events with Talkshoplive, a livestream shopping solution that enables consumers to interactively shop and make purchases within the video player on any embedded site.
Walmart’s upcoming Talkshoplive programming celebrates Black History Month with “Black-Founded Brands Week” hosted by influencers including Kim Kimble and Jermaine Dupri as well as International Women’s Week with “Women Entrepreneurs Week.” The move to regularly scheduled programming follows four live shopping shows Walmart and Talkshoplive hosted over the holiday season with creators including Rachael Ray, Drew Barrymore, Ree Drummond, and IGN, which Walmart says produced strong engagement and positive sales directly as a result.
Walmart and Talkshoplive began a trial period in 2021, which fully allowed the retailer to provide shoppable content through Talkshoplive’s embeddable video player directly on Walmart.com/live, MSN shopping tab, and other product partner sites. Through the solution’s proprietary video player, customers are able to purchase products within the video content, with a system that is embeddable on almost any site.
Since hosting a successful holiday-themed shoppable livestream event on TikTok in December 2020, Walmart has tested 15 shoppable livestream events across five platforms. These have included multiple events hosted on the TikTok short video platform, as well as partnering with social/TV influencer Ree Drummond, also known as “Pioneer Woman,” and her daughter Alex Scott to demo some of their favorite products from the Walmart-exclusive Pioneer Woman collection in a livestream shopping event on Facebook.
In addition, the discount giant kicked off Cyber Week 2021 with a 30-minute livestream shopping event that was fully accessible on Twitter’s new livestream shopping platform. It marked the first time that a U.S. retailer has leveraged Twitter for livestream shopping. Walmart was also the first retailer to pilot livestream shopping on YouTube, and has launched its own Walmart Live livestream shopping platform.
“As a scalable live commerce solution for businesses and creators of all sizes, Walmart is expanding its partnership with Talkshoplive,” says Casey Schlaybaugh, VP of brand at Walmart. “The success of our initial launch has proven Talkshoplive as the partner to give Walmart’s customers live, shoppable content embeddable within Walmart’s e-commerce platform. We are excited to use Talkshoplive as a tool to continue connecting with our customers, bringing both entertainment and product information to one place.”
“Talkshoplive’s partnerships stand out because they range far beyond celebrities and content creators, and allow for merchants to partner internally – allowing Walmart, for example, to embed with publishers in addition to its own e-commerce outlets,” said Talkshoplive CEO and co-founder Bryan Moore. “While we have our celebrity-driven programming like Oprah Winfrey, Matthew McConaughey and Alicia Keys, etc. there are also major suppliers like Walmart and P&G utilizing our platform. Equally, small businesses such as Peach & Lily found success on the platform from being able to work with larger publishers and retailers to connect the retail landscape.”
According to Talkshoplive, its events statistically have three to nine times more in sales than other online pre-orders, with a 45% organic cart-to-purchase ratio.