YouTube to launch monetisation features in India

Alphabet-owned YouTube will introduce commerce features on YouTube, which may then be taken to other countries, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, said during the company’s December quarter earnings call Tuesday  night. Pichai was answering questions from two analysts, who asked about the company’s monetisation efforts on the platform and its efforts in India.

 

“I think all the commerce experiences we are thinking about in YouTube is a whole additional layer of opportunity. And again, it’s another area where it all feels very early to me. We are seeing tremendous traction in YouTube across newer areas, be it podcast, gaming, learning, sports. And so across all these areas, we’ll kind of take a vertical-specific look and see how we can support creators better," Pichai said, answering a question about what commerce and advertising efforts the company is thinking of in the medium to long term.

 

On another question about how Google has developed products in India and other emerging markets and then taken products elsewhere, Pichai said, “When I look at YouTube in India, some of the commerce ideas we talked about earlier, you may see us first stride in India, because we can get quicker feedback, very dynamic youthful population. And so we’ll do it there and then roll it out globally. So we are constantly looking for opportunities like that."

 

YouTube has already expanded to offer Shorts, which veers into the short-video market, to capture a share of the increasing short videos market. YouTube Shorts came on the back of TikTok’s popularity, and was launched in September 2020.