Why Shopping Livestreams Are Taking Over TikTok

Last year, TikTok helped woo sellers to TikTok Shop by footing the bill for incredible discounts on its new e-commerce service. These encouraged merchants to sell items at rock-bottom prices, which led to a deluge of sales. But this year, TikTok is taking a different tack to grow its e-commerce sales by encouraging more brands to go live—a lot.

That’s one of the takeaways from a story Ann Gehan and I published on Wednesday about TikTok Shop and its deeper push into livestream shopping, an effort that’s become key to TikTok’s efforts to hit $17.5 billion in gross U.S. sales for TikTok Shop by year-end.