Over the past two weeks, Shopify introduced significant new integrations with YouTube and TikTok. Both platforms will allow businesses to offer products for sales directly in the platform, while also enabling features to the Shopify admin to make it easy to post and advertise on the platforms.

Facebook and Instagram have reigned as the top choices when it comes to customer acquisition for direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands. Both platforms include the ability to post videos - and neither can claim to be a video-first platform.

YouTube and TikTok are inherently video-first platforms. The astoundingly fast rise in popularity of TikTok, and Youtube's position as the 2nd most popular social media platform prove that video is both hugely popular and growing in popularity. As access to high speed technology increases via 5G, solar internet, and other networking advancements, video stands to grow in popularity.

Most ecommerce brands are not yet taking advantage of video-firs platforms. In a sample of 543 top D2C companies, Facebook and Instagram dominate with 96% and 84% of brands represented on those platforms respectively. Meanwhile, only 38% are present on Youtube and just 3% have gotten started on TikTok.

Apple has announced that it will rollout privacy measures that will make it harder to track conversions from third party sites, like those of Facebook and Instagram. Those platforms have introduced new shopping features in an effort to keep more of the transaction process within their own platforms. Shopify is reacting to the movement to video and has the ability to offer conversion analytics by forging directly relationships.

Video has proven enduringly popular and continues to become more accessible and easier to create. Shopfiy is enabling direct commerce with video-first platforms and relatively few brands have the shift to these platforms, leaving a significant opportunity for the D2C brands that establish strong presences on YouTube and TikTok.