By Mark Seavy  

As social shopping expands across multiple platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the driving force behind the business is moving from brands to influencers and content creators.  

And as that shift occurs, product discovery and checkout are merging, resulting in the need for brands to develop their own creator networks, executives said at Licensing International’s recent Fashion Licensing Summit in New York. 

That infrastructure is being built as the era of “zero click” shopping emerges. Consumers increasingly can make instant product purchases via artificial intelligence (AI), voice assistants, and automated systems using smart devices without navigating websites or clicking through multiple pages. And within the shopping experience, “storefronts” are opening where checkout occurs within a customized environment controlled and curated by social media influencers and content creators. This enables brands to capture the complete customer journey. 

“For so many years brands were driving the economy, and it is increasing becoming where the creators are taking control,” said Leslie Hall, CEO of Haut Drops and Iced Media, which has worked in developing a creator network for TikTok Shop since it launched in 2023. “We are seeing affiliates driving that and the challenge is unit economics and deciding who [the brands or the platform] is covering the costs as the program grows.” 

That growth has resulted in creators receiving 15-25% commissions on product sales, a figure that is likely to further rise as the business expands, Hall said. That compares with 10-15% commissions previously, according to Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, Co-Founder of LumiNicole Beauty, who also founded Digital Brand Architects, among the first agencies to represent influencers. 

The competition for content creators is being driven not only by the arrival of TikTok Shop but also various competitors, including YouTube Shopping, My Sephora Storefront, and Conde Nast’s Vette.  

The platforms all allow creators to build storefronts—but with some caveats. YouTube Shop, for example, is available to influencers and creators with 10,000 or more subscribers and allows creators to connect their stores to the shop through YouTube Studios. Creators join the YouTube Partners Program and can then tag products in videos when uploading and sending them to make them available for sale.  

In the case of Sephora, creators have storefronts within the retailer’s eCommerce system. And Conde Nast’s Vette, which launches early in 2026, will be a network of independent influencer storefronts that have access to AI tools for merchandising, audience measurement, and other functions. It also will have direct data and revenue sharing.  

“It is important to be in all of these channels, but many times consumers come to my website for the final purchase,” said Alice Kim, Founder of PerfectDD, which designs apparel for women with fuller busts. “You can find success on many platforms because consumers might want [loyalty] points from one retailer, go to another to discover, and go back to the one where they want to transact. It is all about the right point of entry.” 

The right point of entry may eventually become AI. 

OpenAI in October launched Instant Checkout, an in-app technology that uses AI chat bots to raise brand awareness and allows consumers to search, shop, and purchase within ChatGPT. Other AI-based technologies have emerged as rivals, including Perplexity’s Buy with Pro functionality and Microsoft’s Copilot Merchant program. 
 

The platforms all come as a recent survey by creative agency VMI found that 68% of global shoppers used AI technology like ChatGPT to shop. And, in a separate survey, 51% of U.S. consumers reported they have used ChatGPT to search for a product, a figure that’s expected to increase 71% during the holiday season, Hall said.
 

“The scale at which this is happening is youth-led, but we are seeing it democratizing across all ages and genders,” Hall said. “There aren’t many moments when consumer performance will transform in a meaningful way, and we have the opportunity to be at that forefront.”