YouTube has widened its Shopping affiliate programme in India, bringing Amazon into the fold and lining up AJIO, Meesho, Snapdeal and Tata CLiQ as incoming retail partners. The additions sit alongside Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Purplle, Shopsy and Tira, extending the platform’s catalogue across value marketplaces, large retailers and beauty specialists.
A creator economy that is scaling quickly
YouTube’s Indian commerce push is showing momentum. The platform says 450 million logged-in users in India search for shopping-related content, and shopping-related watch time in the country has grown 55% year over year.
Creator earnings are moving faster still. Average affiliate payouts to Indian creators rose more than 160% year over year between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, compared with more than 100% globally. Over half of eligible Indian creators are enrolled in the programme, up 200% year over year, and more than 19 million videos have been tagged.
“We’re building a thriving economy where creativity directly leads to commerce,” said Gunjan Soni, Managing Director – India, YouTube.
New AI tools turn watch time into checkouts
The update is not just about adding retailers. YouTube is layering in assistive features that reduce the gap between discovery and purchase:
- Ask YouTube for shopping: viewers can ask product questions and follow-ups while watching, including voice on TV.
- Cross-border product tags: tagged products can show local pricing and regional retailer deals, letting Indian creators earn from international audiences.
- Affiliate Partnerships Boost: brands can pay to amplify organic creator content; Nykaa plans to use it during the festive period.
- Ask Studio for Brand Partnerships: generative AI inside YouTube Studio will help creators respond to brand briefs and pitch campaigns.
- Dynamic brand segments: creators can insert segments into up to 20 long-form videos at once and target by region.
Why this matters for marketing plans
The partner results show YouTube Shopping is being treated as a sales channel, not an experiment. Purplle says creator-tagged videos have driven close to a quarter of a million orders in under a year, with order-level data tracing every purchase back to the creator and video that produced it. Tira reports creator engagement doubling.
Globally, shopping-related watch time crossed 40 billion hours in 2025, and gross merchandise value grew 13X over two years. India’s combination of large logged-in search demand, expanding merchant supply and rising creator payouts makes the programme a serious contender in festive media plans.
For performance marketers, the immediate opportunity is to test affiliate boosts and cross-border product tags before peak shopping demand locks in budgets. The bigger shift is structural: creator commerce is becoming measurable enough to be managed by outcomes rather than reach.
Source: MediaNews4U
