Live shopping companies credit marketers’ rising focus on influencer performance for growth in 2025

“Some of our biggest sellers are selling hundreds of millions of dollars on the platform and creating real, meaningful businesses employing hundreds of people,” Wilson said. “This year feels like the year that live shopping has become much more mainstream, and multiple categories have had tremendous growth.”

The uptick in live shopping activity is not limited to dedicated platforms like Whatnot. TikTok — the most popular live shopping platform in the United States, according to Neil Saunders, a managing director and retail analyst at the analytics company GlobalData — has also reported significant growth in 2025, with sales increasing by 20 percent year over year in 2025, per a joint study between TikTok and GlobalData published in June.

“The most meaningful thing for me that came out of the research is the fact that a lot of consumers are using Tiktok Shop as a platform to discover things,” Saunders said “That’s quite different from platforms like Amazon and Walmart, where a lot of people use those marketplaces for planned purchases.”

Fanatics, a collectibles-focused live shopping platform, has also expanded in 2025, with the company launching its United Kingdom marketplace in April. Although Fanatics president Chris Lamontagne declined to share specific growth figures, he said that Fanatics users purchase an average of 17 items per month on the platform.

“That is a massive amount of purchases,” he said. “People aren’t just buying once and then going away; this is so much more linked to the fact that you come in to be entertained.” 

Live shopping platform executives are tying their growth over the past year to brands’ increasing scrutiny of influencer marketing performance. Live shopping, with its direct clicks and sales, has more easily measurable conversion metrics than other forms of influencer marketing such as sponsorships or branded content. Live shopping platforms believe this has sparked growing interest in live shopping, much like brands’ growing focus on measurement has resulted in a rise in affiliate marketing activity.

“At the end of the day, everybody measures sales. If it doesn’t drive sales, it’s a quite costly channel,” said Maryam Ghahremani, the CEO of the live shopping platform Bambuser, who said that her company had seen growth in the past year but did not share specific numbers. “You wouldn’t have people producing a lot of live shopping material if it didn’t convert.”

For brands and agencies that have grown their spending on live shopping in the past year, performance is a significant consideration. The streetwear company CoolKicks livestreams between 20 and 30 hours per week, according to CEO Adeel Shams, who said that this figure represented an increase in spending but did not share a specific figure. He said that his company currently generates about three million dollars in revenue per month through live shopping on Whatnot, with the ability to measure sales performance as a significant motivator to lean into the channel.

“It’s instant liquidity having tens of thousands of people watching our shows,” he said. “We can move thousands of items a show.”

Ziad Bon, the founder of the perfume brand Oudware, said that his company makes roughly $200,000 per month via live shopping on TikTok, with the ability to make hundreds of thousands in one day via scheduled, hours-long “Mega Live” streaming events. 

“If you were to ask me a year ago, I would have been like, ‘What’s live? I don’t know about that — it’s all about affiliate and commission-based content,’” Bon said. “But, starting lives and doing them properly, you can definitely see that this is a growing part of social media.”

The growth of live shopping in 2025 has led to the expansion of not only live shopping platforms, but also a wider ecosystem of agencies and production companies that have cropped up to meet brands’ growing demand for the channel. Over the past year, the company Puff Media has become a hub for creators’ live shopping activity in New York City, offering its services as both a film set and production service for brands interested in selling to live audiences. 

As live shopping has risen, so has Puff. Since opening its studio in New York’s Industry City complex in 2021, the company has expanded its footprint twice, most recently into a 15,000-square-foot space last year. The company employs a roster of 10 creators such as Gianna Branca to sell products for brands like Oudware and makeup brand Peter Thomas Roth, the latter of which generated “seven digits” in sales during a July 24 Mega Live event, per Puff Media co-founder Lynch Zhang. 

“Just this year, we have around 10 to 15 clients where we are either actively working with them or working on-and-off,” said Zhang, who told Digiday that all of his clients’ live shopping revenue had increased in 2025. “We’re doing more Mega Lives and purchase-based live shopping.”

In spite of the increase in live shopping activity in 2025, live shopping remains a relatively experimental influencer marketing technique for most brands. It’s more important than it was a few years ago or even last year, but remains far from dominant, particularly when compared to the presence of live shopping in Asia. But as brands more closely scrutinize the performance of their influencer spend, live shopping is moving from experimental status toward more widespread strategic use, according to Nicholas Spiro, chief commercial officer of the influencer marketing agency Viral Nation.

“For many large brands, I think it is more important than it was a few years ago,” Spiro said. “But, I personally think that it is on its journey toward becoming a core component of brands’ strategy.”