Overview

• YouTube added Nykaa and Purplle to its Shopping Affiliate Program, enabling creators to tag those catalogs alongside Flipkart and Myntra, with a Nykaa-backed initiative to develop beauty and lifestyle creators.
• An AI-powered system is beginning to display product tags exactly when a creator mentions an item, with broader automatic detection and tagging of all eligible products slated for testing later this year.
• New commerce and ad tools include Product Stickers on Shorts, timestamp-synced tags, a Chrome extension for saving items, flexible brand segment insertion in long-form videos, direct brand links in Shorts, and a Creator Partnerships Hub in Google Ads.
• YouTube reports shopping-related watch time in India has risen more than 250% year over year, over 200 million logged-in users searched for shopping content, more than 40% of eligible creators are enrolled, roughly 3 million videos carry product tags, and Rs 21,000 crore has been paid to creators over three years.
• YouTube says third‑party conversational agents will not be allowed to interact with or make automated purchases via creator videos for now, and it notes the tagging tool is not powered by Gemini as trials continue to refine accuracy and review workflows.