YouTube’s social commerce bet: Still in the game, but playing the long strategy

YouTube’s social commerce push in the West has hit a few bumps, but it’s far from waving the white flag.

Platform executives say they’re still refining products to make shopping while watching as seamless as hitting the share button.

“We’re certainly investing a lot in making shopping successful,” YouTube’s vp of engineering Geoff van der Meer told Digiday at a press event last week in Zurich. “We obviously try to launch products globally. But shopping is inherently a country by country game, because it really comes down to us working with local merchants on a country by country basis, and that takes time.”

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Measuring Google’s AI Overviews’ impact: Why keyword data is more telling than CTRs for publishers

Measuring the impact of Google’s AI Overviews on publishers’ search referral traffic hasn’t been straightforward via click-through data — but keyword data is proving more fruitful. 

Nearly 19 million keywords now feature AI Overviews — that’s up 91% from six months ago, according to Semrush data. The total number of searches that trigger AI Overviews has grown from 6% in September 2024, to 11.4% in March 2025. 

It’s a clear indicator that an increasing volume of content is now being summarized by Google’s AI feature, according to Semrush president Eugene Levin.

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