YouTube has brought Amazon into its shopping programme as an affiliate partner, deepening the video platform’s move into online retail, according to a Bloomberg report.
Under the arrangement, creators will be able to tag Amazon products within their videos and livestreams, letting viewers buy items without leaving YouTube, while creators collect a commission on the resulting sales.
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YouTube Shopping was launched four years ago, built initially around creators posting affiliate links in video descriptions and comments.
The affiliate scheme itself arrived in the US in 2024 and has since been rolled out to India, Southeast Asia, the UK, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
“It is the biggest online retailer in the world coming together with the most-used application on the internet”, said Travis Katz, who heads YouTube Shopping, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Katz said shopping tags deliver roughly double the engagement seen with affiliate links placed in video descriptions.
He also said that gross merchandise volume across YouTube Shopping increased 13-fold worldwide between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2026.
Of YouTube’s roughly three million monetised creators, more than a million now take part in the shopping programme.
Sellers on the platform range from small, direct-to-consumer brands to larger retailers such as Walmart, Sephora and Home Depot.
Katz named e-commerce as the next major strategic priority for parent company Alphabet, likening it to YouTube’s earlier moves into podcasting and its growth in connected television viewing.
A comparable partnership exists between TikTok and Amazon, established two years ago, which lets users shop for Amazon products through ads without leaving the TikTok app.
The announcement comes weeks after Amazon separately unveiled plans to extend its Prime Air drone delivery service to nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of 2026—a sixfold expansion of its current “ultrafast” delivery coverage.
