Broader Reach
RewardStyle’s Liketoknow.it application is rolling out a feature meant to allow influencers to monetize organic video content.
Today, LTK Shopping
Video launches with 5,000 retail partnerships, meaning influencers can feature and link to millions of products sold by mass retailers, global beauty retailers, fitness brands, department stores and luxury brands in videos up to two minutes long.
The feature, which was unveiled virtually to more than 8,000 influencers at RewardStyle’s annual conference, is available to the company’s influencer network and Liketoknow.it’s more than 6 million users.
LTK Shopping Video allows influencers to tag as many brands and specific items that appear in their video content as they wish, making those items and brands immediately shoppable to followers. That capability differs from features such as Instagram’s Shopping From Creators, which only allows influencers to tag products by Checkout-enabled brands that approve them to do so.
“In other platforms, shopping is an ad-type. With us, it’s part of the DNA of what the content is,” said Amber Venz Box, RewardStyle’s cofounder and president. “That allows for a richer, more contextual experience because everything’s completely shoppable.”
The feature, Venz Box continued, is expected to “drive up the competence of the purchase, average order values and ultimately our influencers’ businesses.”
In the first half of 2020, RewardStyle influencers’ original content moved about $1 billion worth of product, with half of that coming from the Liketoknow.it app, according to RewardStyle. The company projects that this year, consumers will purchase more than $2.5 billion of product through RewardStyle influencer content.
To date, RewardStyle influencers have earned about $600 million via the Liketoknow. it app.
LTK Shopping Video is the latest feature rollout from RewardStyle. The company pushed Liketoknow. it into shoppable YouTube content last year and in May, it released a cloud-based portal meant for retail partners to be able to track influencer partnerships in real time.
“Liketoknow.it shopping videos are a high value to a shopper specifically [because] they’re created uniquely for someone who is in the act of shopping,” Venz Box said. “On the retail side, LTK Shopping Video performance will be immediately available in our brands’ influencer marketing dashboards. That’s important for them because as of July, more than half of the sales that we drive to them are now coming through the Liketoknow.it app — versus blogs and other social platforms.”