TikTok Shop’s U.S. live-selling format has largely centered on long streams built around solo hosts, repeated product demonstrations, discounts, and direct calls to buy. The model has helped establish live commerce as a conversion channel, but its utility-first structure may limit its ability to become a broader viewing habit in Western markets.
SKIMS’ “Kimsmas Live!” offered one early alternative. The 45-minute TikTok livestream, hosted by Kim Kardashian, was designed as a holiday variety show with surprise celebrity guests, real-time shopping, exclusive deals, and production support from OBB Media. The format suggested that live shopping in the U.S. may develop less as a direct copy of Chinese commerce streams and more as programmed entertainment with shopping built into the experience.
For this roundtable, 16 Creator Economy experts examine what comes next for live shopping. They discuss celebrity-led events, creator ensembles, recurring shows, gamified formats, and community-driven programming, as well as how brands can earn attention without losing the urgency, product education, pinned offers, and clear calls to action that make live selling convert.
The current TikTok Shop live format has a ceiling because it’s purely bottom-of-funnel. Viewers are already in the interest and intent phase, getting moved into conversion. No new attention is being created, so growth caps out at the audience you already have.
What SKIMS showed isn’t really about celebrity. It’s about stacking two funnels in one stream. The celebrity brings top-of-funnel reach that a solo host rotation could never pull in, and the shop captures whoever’s ready to convert. The live becomes an acquisition channel, not just the checkout.
The mechanics that make live convert don’t go away in an entertainment-led format, they get redesigned. Urgency shifts from flash pricing to education-led, [which is] why this matters now. Demonstration gets more powerful with talent people actually want to watch use the product. Social proof becomes the viewership itself plus personalized callouts, “thanks for the order, Jess,” which doubles as community when it’s a celebrity saying it. The CTA gets woven in throughout, not punched in every 90 seconds.
The brands that win will look at this as running entertainment that happens to sell.
Everyone’s about to copy SKIMS. Most will lose money doing it.
“Kimsmas Live!” worked because it was essentially a 45-minute, broadcast-grade variety show that was fully shoppable in real time. The reason to watch was the show, not the deals. That’s the real shift. The long-duration, solo-host product rotation format has a ceiling in Western markets because it can’t grow audience the way entertainment can, which is why live is only 10% of TikTok Shop GMV, while short-form video is 60%.
What comes next is a split engine: big, produced tentpole lives (celebrity-led or creator-led) built for reach and “I have to see this” energy, paired with always-on creator lives that do the reliable, repeatable conversion work. And leaning into entertainment doesn’t mean sacrificing the mechanics that make live sell. Pinned product rotation, live-only coupons, and scarcity cues still work in any format. If anything, better entertainment creates the exact behaviors TikTok rewards, like completion and lots of different product interactions.
Hot take: live shopping was never the product. Entertainment was. The brands that win won’t sell harder. They’ll make something people would watch even if nothing were for sale, then make it all buyable.
The Chinese long-duration, single-host format hit a ceiling in the West because the cultural assumption underneath it doesn’t translate. In China, live shopping is utility. In the West, audiences have to be entertained into buying. SKIMS’ Kimsmas Live made that explicit: 45 minutes of variety show structure, celebrity cameos, original jingle, a format built to repeat.
The next generation looks more like QVC reimagined for the algorithm. Produced shows, recurring slots, ensemble casts, appointment viewing. The brand becomes the network.
Conversion mechanics don’t disappear, they get embedded inside the entertainment. Limited bundles, countdown urgency, exclusive drops, on-screen order flashes. The trick is treating them as story beats, not interruptions.
To pull this off, brands need three things most don’t have yet: real production capability, a content calendar that treats live as recurring IP, and talent willing to commit to a format instead of a single appearance.
Brands still treating live as a sales channel will lose to brands treating it as programming.
The Chinese live commerce playbook, solo host, eight-hour product rotation, was never going to scale in the West. In China, livestream hosts are the utility. Here, creators are entertainment (character and distribution in one). SKIMS’ celebrity-led live signaled what comes next: appointment-based, IP-driven, episodic commerce. It’s not QVC, but more late-night TV with a buy button. The future of this I see as happening behind the scenes at luxury showrooms and events.
The brands that win will treat the “live” concept like a season premiere, will cast their characters based on chemistry (over followers), and build a content engine where the content extensions like cutdowns drive more revenue than the broadcast itself. Live shopping in the U.S. is becoming its own media format, not a retail channel.
While the conversation about the next generation of live shopping focuses on the front-end, like formats, trends, and celebrity hosts, the answer isn’t sexy: it’s what happens on the back-end, after the stream ends.
TikTok Shop locks customer data inside its walled garden, so brands leave with the money but without the customer: no email, no behavioral data. In the end, this channel’s core issues are retention and lifetime value, not content.
The long-term play is treating lives as a 2-stage “true” customer acquisition funnel. Stage 1 is the impulse buy, generating engagement signals and revenue for Stage 2. Stage 2 takes that data and money to run retargeting ads to livestream engagers, funneling them to the brand’s own storefront.
Bonus hack: Adding a card to live customers’ packaging with a Godfather offer and QR code linked to a landing page, where customers’ real emails will be captured for the first time. That is where the relationship actually begins: data collection and segmented 1:1 touchpoints, leading to better lifetime value.
The live becomes a self-sustaining customer acquisition channel feeding an owned retention engine, not by selling more during the stream, but by owning the customer after it.
The move toward marrying live selling with entertainment makes sense when you consider that social media has been shifting from a distribution channel to an entertainment channel. Meeting shoppers, particularly Gen Z, inside the entertainment they’re already seeking out offers a more natural way to shift behavior.
But this doesn’t mean the single-host model is dead, it just has a narrower set of conditions within which it succeeds. KimChi Chic Beauty is a good example. Founder Kim Chi hosts her own TikTok Shop lives, and it works because her drag performance background makes entertainment part of who she is. This has made her streams feel like more of a community than a strict transactional space, with regulars who tune in not just to shop, but to engage.
What SKIMS got right with Kimsmas was the mindset. Treating it as a show gave viewers a reason to tune in that had nothing to do with shopping. You don’t need a big production to replicate that. The shift is in thinking like a producer building a show that happens to be shoppable, rather than thinking like a retailer building a live channel.
I think the next generation of live shopping in the U.S. is going to look less like a livestreamed sales floor and more like an actual show that happens to be shoppable.
In China, long-duration product rotation with a solo host works because the consumer behavior is already built around that format. In the U.S., we have a different relationship with selling. We grew up with QVC, infomercials, affiliate marketing, and creators constantly pushing products. There is a natural skepticism when something feels too obviously transactional or commission-driven.
That is why conferences like SoCom (the Social Commerce Conference) are interesting. The conversation is moving beyond “how do we sell more products on live?” and toward “how do we make livestream commerce something people actually want to watch?”
The next wave is celebrity-led streams, creator-led programming, recurring live formats, product drops, games, challenges, interviews, and entertainment-first moments where the product is integrated into the experience, not forced into the viewer’s face.
Brands still need the conversion mechanics: urgency, bundles, pinned products, limited offers, clear CTAs, trained moderators, and real-time audience feedback. But the livestream itself has to earn attention first. In the U.S., trust and entertainment have to come before the sale.
I believe one of the biggest mistakes the industry is making is trying to directly copy the Chinese live commerce model into Western markets. Consumer behavior, attention span, creator culture, and even the relationship people have with shopping content is completely different.
In China, users are willing to stay connected to a live for hours because live commerce is already part of their digital culture. In Western markets, especially in the U.S. and Latin America, audiences consume content in a much more entertainment-first way. If the content stops being entertaining, people leave immediately.
That’s why I don’t think the future of live shopping will be built around “24/7 product rotation” with a single host trying to hard sell products nonstop. The ceiling for that format is already visible.
The next generation of live shopping will look much closer to entertainment ecosystems than traditional shopping channels.
We’ll see:
Creator duos and collaborative formats instead of solo hosts
Celebrity participation integrated naturally into content
Competition mechanics, challenges and gamification
More storytelling and episodic content
Shopping integrated into culture moments, not isolated from them
Hybrid formats that feel closer to Twitch, reality TV, podcasts or interactive shows than to QVC
SKIMS is actually a great example because it validates something important: audiences engage more when shopping becomes part of a larger entertainment experience rather than the only objective.
The challenge for brands is operationalizing this without losing conversion efficiency. In my opinion, the answer is not choosing between “performance” or “entertainment” – the future winners will be the brands capable of combining both.
Entertainment drives attention.
Creators drive trust.
Community drives retention.
Data and platform mechanics drive conversion.
The brands that understand how to orchestrate all four simultaneously will dominate the next era of live commerce.
At BrandMe we’ve seen that younger audiences no longer respond well to overly structured advertising formats. They want participation, authenticity, and interaction. Live shopping will evolve faster once brands stop treating it as a sales channel and start treating it as an entertainment product that also happens to sell.
The current U.S. TikTok Shop formula, including marathon livestreams with nonstop product rotation, is optimized for conversion, but not necessarily for culture. In China, audiences are conditioned for utility-first commerce streams. Western audiences expect entertainment, narrative, and personality first, with shopping woven in.
We’ve seen that shift happening across TikTok more broadly. The platform is increasingly rewarding episodic programming (think recurring formats, serialized creator concepts, and “appointment viewing”) that keeps audiences coming back, just like TV shows. Live shopping is headed in the same direction.
The next generation of live commerce will look less like QVC and more like interactive entertainment: celebrity-led drops, creator ensembles, gamified formats, behind-the-scenes access, and recurring “shows” people tune into regardless of purchase intent. SKIMS’ celebrity-driven live is an early indicator of that evolution.
Operationally, brands can’t abandon the mechanics that drive conversion (e.g., urgency, demos, scarcity, real-time engagement), but they need to package them inside formats built for fandom and repeat viewership. The winners will treat live shopping as a media channel first and a sales channel second.
The next generation of live shopping is going to look a lot more like entertainment than traditional retail. The creators who are really driving results aren’t just selling products, they’re building connection, personality, community, and moments audiences genuinely want to be part of. What made things like SKIMS’ celebrity-led live so effective is that people would have tuned in regardless of whether something was being sold.
The best live commerce feels culture-first and creator-led, not overly produced or transactional. Brands that win in this space will be the ones willing to trust creators with strong points of view and give them the flexibility to show up naturally, rather than over scripting every moment.
Ironically, when content feels less like an ad, conversion often gets stronger because audiences engage more authentically. The future of live shopping isn’t recreating QVC for a younger audience, it’s blending entertainment, community, and commerce in a way that feels seamless.
Strategically, I think we’re moving from “live shopping” to what I’d call participatory commerce ecosystems.
The current Western model still treats live as a sales channel. China proved that live commerce becomes exponentially more powerful when it evolves into a media ecosystem with recurring personalities, rituals, communities, and entertainment formats people intentionally return to.
The next generation of live shopping in the U.S. and Europe will likely be less about maximizing immediate GMV per stream and more about building long-term audience ownership and cultural relevance. In that model, brands stop acting like retailers and start acting more like studios, producers, and community platforms.
That changes everything operationally: live shopping won’t sit only under e-commerce teams anymore. It will require collaboration between creator partnerships, entertainment, media, community, and performance marketing functions.
The brands that win will understand that attention is no longer captured through interruption, but through participation. The future of live commerce is not simply “watch and buy,” but “watch, interact, belong, and buy.”
I think the next generation of live shopping will stay fundamentally human-driven. People do not buy products purely for utility. They buy identity, emotion, values, and the story surrounding a brand. Sneakers are not just sneakers – consumers choose brands like Nike, Adidas, or Puma because of the narrative and cultural meaning attached to them.
Second, live commerce needs to become more story-driven rather than relying on repetitive offer rotation. Constantly pushing the same pitch may still convert, but stronger engagement comes from structured storytelling: clear stakes, transformation, conflict, solutions, and emotional investment. The product should exist naturally within the narrative – sometimes as the hero, sometimes as a supporting element.
Third, AI-powered live selling will absolutely emerge: always-on streams with digital hosts, avatars, or AI twins operating at scale. Humans will likely remain behind the scenes as orchestrators. But while AI streams may become profitable and operationally efficient, I do not think they will fully replace human-led entertainment commerce. The strongest emotional connection – and ultimately the biggest stars – will still be real people.
Most live shopping in the U.S. still feels too transactional, and that’s the ceiling. The format works in China because audiences are already conditioned for long-form commerce streams, but Western audiences engage differently. If brands want live shopping to scale here, it has to feel more like entertainment first and sales second.
We’re already starting to see that shift with more personality-led formats, celebrity integration, and creators treating lives more like shows than storefronts. The next phase will probably look less like a host rotating products for hours and more like interactive content built around conversations, collaborations, behind-the-scenes moments, and audience participation.
From a brand side, the challenge is balancing entertainment with conversion. The brands that will win are the ones building formats where the product is naturally integrated into the content rather than interrupting it. Strong creators matter here because they know how to keep attention while still driving action.
At the end of the day, live shopping only works long-term if audiences would still watch even if they weren’t planning to buy anything.
I think the next generation of live shopping will become far more entertainment-driven. Right now, many TikTok Shop lives are optimized purely for quick conversions: repetitive messaging, urgency tactics, and nonstop flash sales. While that can drive immediate purchases, it often gives viewers little reason to stay engaged once they’ve checked out.
Western audiences respond more strongly to content that feels entertaining, authentic, and community-oriented rather than aggressively sales-focused. The recent celebrity-led SKIMS live is a great example of this shift. Lives are starting to feel more like cultural moments or exclusive events, where audiences tune in not just for products, but for personalities, access, and shared experience.
I think brands will increasingly lean into limited, event-based exclusivity instead of constant repetitive discounts. Exclusive drops, celebrity interactions, recurring “must-watch” moments, and community-driven experiences create stronger urgency because audiences feel like they’ll genuinely miss something if they don’t tune in live.
The brands and creators that win will be the ones that make audiences feel part of an experience, not just a transaction.
U.S. live shopping will increasingly rely on personality, expertise, and entertainment. We’re already seeing this in the early success of auction-led LIVE on Whatnot and eBay, as well as founder-led and seller-led livestreams on TikTok.
This is a different path from the original TikTok LIVE model, which borrowed heavily from China’s live commerce playbook built around discounts, price competition, and hard selling. That model is starting to struggle in the U.S. We’ve seen LIVE growth slow and many brand-run livestreams become difficult to sustain.
That’s what makes live shopping especially exciting for emerging brands. The format is much more democratized. Small and mid-sized brands often have an advantage because they move faster, stay closer to their audience, and create more personal and engaging content. It’s a huge opportunity, especially for founders and creators who can educate, entertain, and build trust while selling.
Brands should consider live shopping as a solution when two things are true – they have a physical product to promote and at least one great creator to speak to the product in a livestream who’s entertaining and fun. For inspiration, look to TV channels dedicated to shopping – how they mingle banter between hosts with audience engagement and practical product information and education. Don’t just give consumers reasons to buy. Give them reasons to tune in, comment, and share.
Nii A. Ahene is the founder and managing director of Net Influencer, a website dedicated to offering insights into the influencer marketing industry. Together with its newsletter, Influencer Weekly, Net Influencer provides news, commentary, and analysis of the events shaping the creator and influencer marketing space. Through interviews with startups, influencers, brands, and platforms, Nii and his team explore how influencer marketing is being effectively used to benefit businesses and personal brands alike.
TikTok Shop’s U.S. live-selling format has largely centered on long streams built around solo hosts, repeated product demonstrations, discounts, and direct calls to buy. The model has helped establish live commerce as a conversion channel, but its utility-first structure may limit its ability to become a broader viewing habit in Western markets.
SKIMS’ “Kimsmas Live!” offered one early alternative. The 45-minute TikTok livestream, hosted by Kim Kardashian, was designed as a holiday variety show with surprise celebrity guests, real-time shopping, exclusive deals, and production support from OBB Media. The format suggested that live shopping in the U.S. may develop less as a direct copy of Chinese commerce streams and more as programmed entertainment with shopping built into the experience.
For this roundtable, 16 Creator Economy experts examine what comes next for live shopping. They discuss celebrity-led events, creator ensembles, recurring shows, gamified formats, and community-driven programming, as well as how brands can earn attention without losing the urgency, product education, pinned offers, and clear calls to action that make live selling convert.
Remy Beaumont, Founder, Z MEDIA®
The current TikTok Shop live format has a ceiling because it’s purely bottom-of-funnel. Viewers are already in the interest and intent phase, getting moved into conversion. No new attention is being created, so growth caps out at the audience you already have.
What SKIMS showed isn’t really about celebrity. It’s about stacking two funnels in one stream. The celebrity brings top-of-funnel reach that a solo host rotation could never pull in, and the shop captures whoever’s ready to convert. The live becomes an acquisition channel, not just the checkout.
The mechanics that make live convert don’t go away in an entertainment-led format, they get redesigned. Urgency shifts from flash pricing to education-led, [which is] why this matters now. Demonstration gets more powerful with talent people actually want to watch use the product. Social proof becomes the viewership itself plus personalized callouts, “thanks for the order, Jess,” which doubles as community when it’s a celebrity saying it. The CTA gets woven in throughout, not punched in every 90 seconds.
The brands that win will look at this as running entertainment that happens to sell.
Kate Fleming, Director of Influencer Strategy, PartnerCentric
Everyone’s about to copy SKIMS. Most will lose money doing it.
“Kimsmas Live!” worked because it was essentially a 45-minute, broadcast-grade variety show that was fully shoppable in real time. The reason to watch was the show, not the deals. That’s the real shift. The long-duration, solo-host product rotation format has a ceiling in Western markets because it can’t grow audience the way entertainment can, which is why live is only 10% of TikTok Shop GMV, while short-form video is 60%.
What comes next is a split engine: big, produced tentpole lives (celebrity-led or creator-led) built for reach and “I have to see this” energy, paired with always-on creator lives that do the reliable, repeatable conversion work. And leaning into entertainment doesn’t mean sacrificing the mechanics that make live sell. Pinned product rotation, live-only coupons, and scarcity cues still work in any format. If anything, better entertainment creates the exact behaviors TikTok rewards, like completion and lots of different product interactions.
Hot take: live shopping was never the product. Entertainment was. The brands that win won’t sell harder. They’ll make something people would watch even if nothing were for sale, then make it all buyable.
Tobias Hoss, Senior Advisor, TopFan
The Chinese long-duration, single-host format hit a ceiling in the West because the cultural assumption underneath it doesn’t translate. In China, live shopping is utility. In the West, audiences have to be entertained into buying. SKIMS’ Kimsmas Live made that explicit: 45 minutes of variety show structure, celebrity cameos, original jingle, a format built to repeat.
The next generation looks more like QVC reimagined for the algorithm. Produced shows, recurring slots, ensemble casts, appointment viewing. The brand becomes the network.
Conversion mechanics don’t disappear, they get embedded inside the entertainment. Limited bundles, countdown urgency, exclusive drops, on-screen order flashes. The trick is treating them as story beats, not interruptions.
To pull this off, brands need three things most don’t have yet: real production capability, a content calendar that treats live as recurring IP, and talent willing to commit to a format instead of a single appearance.
Brands still treating live as a sales channel will lose to brands treating it as programming.
Brandon Perlman, Founder & CEO, Social Studies, Inc.
The Chinese live commerce playbook, solo host, eight-hour product rotation, was never going to scale in the West. In China, livestream hosts are the utility. Here, creators are entertainment (character and distribution in one). SKIMS’ celebrity-led live signaled what comes next: appointment-based, IP-driven, episodic commerce. It’s not QVC, but more late-night TV with a buy button. The future of this I see as happening behind the scenes at luxury showrooms and events.
The brands that win will treat the “live” concept like a season premiere, will cast their characters based on chemistry (over followers), and build a content engine where the content extensions like cutdowns drive more revenue than the broadcast itself. Live shopping in the U.S. is becoming its own media format, not a retail channel.
Daniel Caldas, Founder, Caldas Ecom
While the conversation about the next generation of live shopping focuses on the front-end, like formats, trends, and celebrity hosts, the answer isn’t sexy: it’s what happens on the back-end, after the stream ends.
TikTok Shop locks customer data inside its walled garden, so brands leave with the money but without the customer: no email, no behavioral data. In the end, this channel’s core issues are retention and lifetime value, not content.
The long-term play is treating lives as a 2-stage “true” customer acquisition funnel. Stage 1 is the impulse buy, generating engagement signals and revenue for Stage 2. Stage 2 takes that data and money to run retargeting ads to livestream engagers, funneling them to the brand’s own storefront.
Bonus hack: Adding a card to live customers’ packaging with a Godfather offer and QR code linked to a landing page, where customers’ real emails will be captured for the first time. That is where the relationship actually begins: data collection and segmented 1:1 touchpoints, leading to better lifetime value.
The live becomes a self-sustaining customer acquisition channel feeding an owned retention engine, not by selling more during the stream, but by owning the customer after it.
Beth Everhart, Managing Director, AntiSocial
The move toward marrying live selling with entertainment makes sense when you consider that social media has been shifting from a distribution channel to an entertainment channel. Meeting shoppers, particularly Gen Z, inside the entertainment they’re already seeking out offers a more natural way to shift behavior.
But this doesn’t mean the single-host model is dead, it just has a narrower set of conditions within which it succeeds. KimChi Chic Beauty is a good example. Founder Kim Chi hosts her own TikTok Shop lives, and it works because her drag performance background makes entertainment part of who she is. This has made her streams feel like more of a community than a strict transactional space, with regulars who tune in not just to shop, but to engage.
What SKIMS got right with Kimsmas was the mindset. Treating it as a show gave viewers a reason to tune in that had nothing to do with shopping. You don’t need a big production to replicate that. The shift is in thinking like a producer building a show that happens to be shoppable, rather than thinking like a retailer building a live channel.
Dylan Huey, CEO, REACH
I think the next generation of live shopping in the U.S. is going to look less like a livestreamed sales floor and more like an actual show that happens to be shoppable.
In China, long-duration product rotation with a solo host works because the consumer behavior is already built around that format. In the U.S., we have a different relationship with selling. We grew up with QVC, infomercials, affiliate marketing, and creators constantly pushing products. There is a natural skepticism when something feels too obviously transactional or commission-driven.
That is why conferences like SoCom (the Social Commerce Conference) are interesting. The conversation is moving beyond “how do we sell more products on live?” and toward “how do we make livestream commerce something people actually want to watch?”
The next wave is celebrity-led streams, creator-led programming, recurring live formats, product drops, games, challenges, interviews, and entertainment-first moments where the product is integrated into the experience, not forced into the viewer’s face.
Brands still need the conversion mechanics: urgency, bundles, pinned products, limited offers, clear CTAs, trained moderators, and real-time audience feedback. But the livestream itself has to earn attention first. In the U.S., trust and entertainment have to come before the sale.
Gerardo Sordo, CEO & Founder, BrandMe
I believe one of the biggest mistakes the industry is making is trying to directly copy the Chinese live commerce model into Western markets. Consumer behavior, attention span, creator culture, and even the relationship people have with shopping content is completely different.
In China, users are willing to stay connected to a live for hours because live commerce is already part of their digital culture. In Western markets, especially in the U.S. and Latin America, audiences consume content in a much more entertainment-first way. If the content stops being entertaining, people leave immediately.
That’s why I don’t think the future of live shopping will be built around “24/7 product rotation” with a single host trying to hard sell products nonstop. The ceiling for that format is already visible.
The next generation of live shopping will look much closer to entertainment ecosystems than traditional shopping channels.
We’ll see:
Creator duos and collaborative formats instead of solo hosts
Celebrity participation integrated naturally into content
Competition mechanics, challenges and gamification
More storytelling and episodic content
Shopping integrated into culture moments, not isolated from them
Hybrid formats that feel closer to Twitch, reality TV, podcasts or interactive shows than to QVC
SKIMS is actually a great example because it validates something important: audiences engage more when shopping becomes part of a larger entertainment experience rather than the only objective.
The challenge for brands is operationalizing this without losing conversion efficiency. In my opinion, the answer is not choosing between “performance” or “entertainment” – the future winners will be the brands capable of combining both.
Entertainment drives attention.
Creators drive trust.
Community drives retention.
Data and platform mechanics drive conversion.
The brands that understand how to orchestrate all four simultaneously will dominate the next era of live commerce.
At BrandMe we’ve seen that younger audiences no longer respond well to overly structured advertising formats. They want participation, authenticity, and interaction. Live shopping will evolve faster once brands stop treating it as a sales channel and start treating it as an entertainment product that also happens to sell.
Emily Larsen, Social Strategy Director, Movers+Shakers
The current U.S. TikTok Shop formula, including marathon livestreams with nonstop product rotation, is optimized for conversion, but not necessarily for culture. In China, audiences are conditioned for utility-first commerce streams. Western audiences expect entertainment, narrative, and personality first, with shopping woven in.
We’ve seen that shift happening across TikTok more broadly. The platform is increasingly rewarding episodic programming (think recurring formats, serialized creator concepts, and “appointment viewing”) that keeps audiences coming back, just like TV shows. Live shopping is headed in the same direction.
The next generation of live commerce will look less like QVC and more like interactive entertainment: celebrity-led drops, creator ensembles, gamified formats, behind-the-scenes access, and recurring “shows” people tune into regardless of purchase intent. SKIMS’ celebrity-driven live is an early indicator of that evolution.
Operationally, brands can’t abandon the mechanics that drive conversion (e.g., urgency, demos, scarcity, real-time engagement), but they need to package them inside formats built for fandom and repeat viewership. The winners will treat live shopping as a media channel first and a sales channel second.
Nilou Ajdari, Co-Founder & Head of Talent, Currents Management
The next generation of live shopping is going to look a lot more like entertainment than traditional retail. The creators who are really driving results aren’t just selling products, they’re building connection, personality, community, and moments audiences genuinely want to be part of. What made things like SKIMS’ celebrity-led live so effective is that people would have tuned in regardless of whether something was being sold.
The best live commerce feels culture-first and creator-led, not overly produced or transactional. Brands that win in this space will be the ones willing to trust creators with strong points of view and give them the flexibility to show up naturally, rather than over scripting every moment.
Ironically, when content feels less like an ad, conversion often gets stronger because audiences engage more authentically. The future of live shopping isn’t recreating QVC for a younger audience, it’s blending entertainment, community, and commerce in a way that feels seamless.
Nicolas Bon, CEO, Anorak Travel
Strategically, I think we’re moving from “live shopping” to what I’d call participatory commerce ecosystems.
The current Western model still treats live as a sales channel. China proved that live commerce becomes exponentially more powerful when it evolves into a media ecosystem with recurring personalities, rituals, communities, and entertainment formats people intentionally return to.
The next generation of live shopping in the U.S. and Europe will likely be less about maximizing immediate GMV per stream and more about building long-term audience ownership and cultural relevance. In that model, brands stop acting like retailers and start acting more like studios, producers, and community platforms.
That changes everything operationally: live shopping won’t sit only under e-commerce teams anymore. It will require collaboration between creator partnerships, entertainment, media, community, and performance marketing functions.
The brands that win will understand that attention is no longer captured through interruption, but through participation. The future of live commerce is not simply “watch and buy,” but “watch, interact, belong, and buy.”
Andrii Salii, YouTube Strategist, Andrii Salii Content
I think the next generation of live shopping will stay fundamentally human-driven. People do not buy products purely for utility. They buy identity, emotion, values, and the story surrounding a brand. Sneakers are not just sneakers – consumers choose brands like Nike, Adidas, or Puma because of the narrative and cultural meaning attached to them.
Second, live commerce needs to become more story-driven rather than relying on repetitive offer rotation. Constantly pushing the same pitch may still convert, but stronger engagement comes from structured storytelling: clear stakes, transformation, conflict, solutions, and emotional investment. The product should exist naturally within the narrative – sometimes as the hero, sometimes as a supporting element.
Third, AI-powered live selling will absolutely emerge: always-on streams with digital hosts, avatars, or AI twins operating at scale. Humans will likely remain behind the scenes as orchestrators. But while AI streams may become profitable and operationally efficient, I do not think they will fully replace human-led entertainment commerce. The strongest emotional connection – and ultimately the biggest stars – will still be real people.
Craig Vallado, Senior Campaign & Talent Manager, Clicks Talent
Most live shopping in the U.S. still feels too transactional, and that’s the ceiling. The format works in China because audiences are already conditioned for long-form commerce streams, but Western audiences engage differently. If brands want live shopping to scale here, it has to feel more like entertainment first and sales second.
We’re already starting to see that shift with more personality-led formats, celebrity integration, and creators treating lives more like shows than storefronts. The next phase will probably look less like a host rotating products for hours and more like interactive content built around conversations, collaborations, behind-the-scenes moments, and audience participation.
From a brand side, the challenge is balancing entertainment with conversion. The brands that will win are the ones building formats where the product is naturally integrated into the content rather than interrupting it. Strong creators matter here because they know how to keep attention while still driving action.
At the end of the day, live shopping only works long-term if audiences would still watch even if they weren’t planning to buy anything.
Jaclyn Jasgu, Affiliate Marketing Assistant, Illuminate Social
I think the next generation of live shopping will become far more entertainment-driven. Right now, many TikTok Shop lives are optimized purely for quick conversions: repetitive messaging, urgency tactics, and nonstop flash sales. While that can drive immediate purchases, it often gives viewers little reason to stay engaged once they’ve checked out.
Western audiences respond more strongly to content that feels entertaining, authentic, and community-oriented rather than aggressively sales-focused. The recent celebrity-led SKIMS live is a great example of this shift. Lives are starting to feel more like cultural moments or exclusive events, where audiences tune in not just for products, but for personalities, access, and shared experience.
I think brands will increasingly lean into limited, event-based exclusivity instead of constant repetitive discounts. Exclusive drops, celebrity interactions, recurring “must-watch” moments, and community-driven experiences create stronger urgency because audiences feel like they’ll genuinely miss something if they don’t tune in live.
The brands and creators that win will be the ones that make audiences feel part of an experience, not just a transaction.
Jing Zhao, CEO, ShopliveX
U.S. live shopping will increasingly rely on personality, expertise, and entertainment. We’re already seeing this in the early success of auction-led LIVE on Whatnot and eBay, as well as founder-led and seller-led livestreams on TikTok.
This is a different path from the original TikTok LIVE model, which borrowed heavily from China’s live commerce playbook built around discounts, price competition, and hard selling. That model is starting to struggle in the U.S. We’ve seen LIVE growth slow and many brand-run livestreams become difficult to sustain.
That’s what makes live shopping especially exciting for emerging brands. The format is much more democratized. Small and mid-sized brands often have an advantage because they move faster, stay closer to their audience, and create more personal and engaging content. It’s a huge opportunity, especially for founders and creators who can educate, entertain, and build trust while selling.
Finola Austin, VP, Creative & Client Strategy, Linqia
Brands should consider live shopping as a solution when two things are true – they have a physical product to promote and at least one great creator to speak to the product in a livestream who’s entertaining and fun. For inspiration, look to TV channels dedicated to shopping – how they mingle banter between hosts with audience engagement and practical product information and education. Don’t just give consumers reasons to buy. Give them reasons to tune in, comment, and share.
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