Walmart is making a livestreaming push to further enhance its advertising services and engage consumers, while Qurate Retail is expanding livestreaming in its QVC and HSN operations.
The partnership will set up Walmart Connect to bring shoppable, short-form, social-media-style videos to its own digital properties while also making them available to advertisers, according to Firework. By bringing product discovery and final transactions together under a single immersive system, Walmart Connect supports the entire customer interaction.
Walmart Connect introduced a live shopping experience in support of the retailer’s September Mega Beauty Event with partners J&J, L’Oreal, P&G and Unilever. The event included four livestreams from September 13 to 16 and featured replays and shoppable videos for select products.
Walmart established Connect as a retail media platform that hooks advertisers up with its customers throughout the shopping journey whether onsite at walmart.com, online but offsite or in-store. By combining Firework’s live and short-form video experience — as well as its capacity for organic community growth outside of social networks — with Walmart Connect’s closed-loop systems, the partnership aims to create an end-to-end experiential and insight-rich environment from discovery to purchase.
“Video and livestream commerce truly works when you put the customer at the center of the experience, and that’s what we’re doing here,” said Rich Lehrfeld, Walmart Connect’s senior vp and general manager, in helping to announce the livestreaming initiative. “Our partnership with Firework further underscores how Walmart Connect is committed to evolving our business and expanding our offerings to actively stay ahead of what advertisers need. We’re proud to be able to serve Walmart customers with engaging experiences in the places they already love to shop.”
In the meantime, QVC and HSN jointly announced the launch of an interactive streaming shopping service on Samsung Smart TVs. The QVC+ and HSN+ new combined streaming service provides Samsung Smart TV users a robust, comprehensive video commerce experience, with live, on-demand and streaming-only content together in a single easy-to-use, fully shoppable app. It is the only shopping app on Samsung Smart TV that allows viewers to complete purchases within. The app combines multiple channels of live content with video on demand. Samsung Smart TV users can sign into their QVC or HSN account to browse product offerings and complete purchases.
