MU7MBAI: YouTube is turning beauty tutorials into storefronts. The video platform has added Nykaa and Purplle to its shopping affiliate programme, expanding creators’ ability to monetise content as shopping-related watch time in India jumps 250 per cent year-on-year.
The move doubles down on beauty and lifestyle, a category where 89 per cent of Indian shoppers say YouTube helps them make confident purchase decisions. Creators enrolled in the programme can now tag products from Nykaa and Purplle alongside existing partners Flipkart and Myntra, earning commissions when viewers buy.
More than 40 per cent of eligible creators in India have signed up since the programme launched a year ago, tagging products in over three million videos. Over 200 million logged-in users in India have made shopping-related searches on YouTube, creating what the platform calls a “complete monetisation ecosystem”.
“The next era of video commerce is already being defined by India’s vibrant creator economy on YouTube,” says YouTube India managing director Gunjan Soni. “We are scaling content-driven shopping from a successful programme to a complete monetisation ecosystem.”
YouTube is sweetening the deal with artificial intelligence tools that automatically tag products the moment they’re mentioned in videos, capturing viewer interest at its peak. The platform will also test automatic product identification later this year.
Flipkart vice president of growth and marketing Pratik Arun Shetty, frames the partnership as commerce meeting creativity. “India’s creator economy is transforming how people engage with brands,” he says. Myntra reports creator collaborations have grown threefold in the past year, whilst Nykaa positions itself as a pioneer in content-led commerce.
YouTube is also rolling out tools to make brand deals more lucrative: a flexible format for inserting and replacing sponsored segments, links to brand sites in Shorts, and a Creator Partnerships Hub inside Google Ads to connect advertisers with influencers.
It’s a bet that authenticity converts. Whether creators cash in or merely chase clicks will depend on whether viewers trust recommendations—or just skip to the comments.
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