Shoppers aren’t just influenced by video anymore, video is the shopping experience. We sat down with Ajay Bam, co‑founder and CEO of Vyrill Inc., to unpack how short, authentic clips now drive discovery, trust, and conversion across digital retail and physical stores. From TikTok Shop’s staggering growth to Amazon’s video‑led PDPs, the signals are clear: if customers can’t search inside your videos, they can’t find answers, and they won’t buy.
Ajay takes us inside the machinery that turns content into commerce. He explains how AI cracks open video across 21 dimensions: speech, on‑screen text, scenes, sentiment, objects, and brand safety, so retailers can moderate at scale, index what matters, and surface the exact five seconds that resolve a shopper’s doubt. We explore Vyrill’s four Cs: capture licensed UGC and reviews, curate with brand‑safe filters, connect videos to search and PDPs with instant loading, and convert by attributing revenue to specific clips. The payoff is speed and control: use the content you already have, license what you need, and promote what sells.
We also dive into personalization and agentic commerce. Instead of one reel for everyone, AI can assemble video experiences that reflect real intent, preferences, past purchases, even color variants rendered inside the clip. That same structure makes your catalog legible to shopping agents and large language models, improving recommendations and organic reach. Beyond the website, we look at omnichannel plays: app modules, email, retail media, and in‑store screens that loop creator‑led demos or unlock reviews when a shopper scans a shelf tag.
If your video strategy stops at “upload and hope,” you’re leaving revenue on the table. Hear practical KPIs to track: content mix, safe‑publish rate, search‑to‑clip CTR, clip‑level conversion lift, contribution to GMV and AOV, and why distribution and measurement matter as much as creation. The brands that win will move faster, test weekly, and treat video as core infrastructure: searchable, safe, fast, shoppable, and accountable. Enjoy the conversation, then subscribe, share with a colleague who owns your PDPs, and leave a quick review to help more builders find the show.
More About this Episode
Video Is Commerce: Why Retailers Must Rethink Content, Discovery, and Conversion Now
Video is no longer a marketing layer added to ecommerce. It is rapidly becoming the operating system of modern commerce.
For years, retailers treated video as a branding tool. A product demo on a PDP. A campaign asset for social media. A polished advertisement embedded in a landing page. But consumer behavior has shifted. Video is now how shoppers discover products, build trust, validate decisions, and complete purchases.
Platforms like TikTok Shop have made this undeniable. Generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over a single holiday weekend, TikTok has proven that video is not just influencing commerce. It is commerce.
And yet, most brands and retailers are still underutilizing their most powerful video assets. Nearly 95 percent of video content remains unsearchable, unstructured, and disconnected from measurable revenue impact.
That gap is where the opportunity lies.
The Behavioral Shift That Retailers Can No Longer Ignore
The rise of video commerce did not begin inside boardrooms. It began with consumers.
Shoppers today spend significant portions of their day watching short form video. What started as entertainment has evolved into a trusted discovery engine. When evaluating products, particularly those above a modest price threshold, consumers increasingly look for authentic video reviews, demonstrations, and use case explanations.
Static product descriptions and polished studio photography are no longer enough. Shoppers want to see real people using real products in real environments.
This is not a generational quirk. It is a structural shift in how trust is built online.
What TikTok Understood Before Everyone Else
TikTok’s explosive growth in commerce is not accidental. It rests on a few foundational insights that traditional ecommerce platforms have been slow to embrace.
First, TikTok understands what is inside a video. Its algorithm analyzes content deeply and surfaces the most relevant videos based on behavioral signals. That personalization drives engagement and purchase.
Second, it mastered short form attention. Most videos are under a minute, designed to capture interest immediately. In a world of shrinking attention spans, brevity wins.
Third, and most importantly, TikTok prioritized authentic user-generated content. Real people demonstrating products in unscripted ways created credibility that traditional advertising often struggles to achieve.
Many retailers still rely heavily on brand-produced video. While polished content has a role, authenticity consistently drives higher engagement and conversion.
The Structural Problem: Video Without Intelligence
Despite the explosion of video creation, most retailers face a fundamental challenge. Video content is rarely structured or searchable.
Imagine a product page with multiple videos. One shopper wants to see how the product performs in small spaces. Another wants to understand durability. A third cares about color variations. Without intelligent indexing, shoppers are forced to click randomly and hope they find what they need.
This creates friction, reduces engagement, and wastes the substantial investment brands make in video production.
Video becomes truly powerful when it can be analyzed across audio, visual elements, on-screen text, and contextual cues. When it becomes searchable, it becomes actionable. When it becomes actionable, it becomes measurable.
That transformation is what separates passive video from performance-driven video commerce.
From Playback Asset to Revenue Engine
Retailers who want to compete in the coming years must shift their mindset. Video is not just something you upload. It is something you optimize.
That means thinking beyond whether a product page has video and asking more strategic questions. What mix of content is driving conversion? How are user-generated videos influencing average order value? Which videos increase add-to-cart rates? Are certain demographics responding differently to specific types of content?
A common high-performing mix includes a smaller portion of branded or influencer content combined with a much larger share of authentic customer video. The balance matters because shoppers value relatability over polish.
Video must also be integrated across channels. Content that lives only on social platforms leaves revenue on the table. The same video assets should be dynamically deployed across product detail pages, mobile apps, retail media placements, and marketplace listings.
When video is treated as a measurable performance lever rather than a branding expense, ROI becomes visible.
Agentic Commerce Raises the Stakes
The rise of AI-powered shopping agents changes the equation further.
Shopping agents do not simply read product titles and bullet points. They evaluate reviews, shipping speed, ratings, and increasingly, video content. If video remains unstructured, it cannot be surfaced effectively by these systems.
Retailers now have to think beyond optimizing for search engines. They must optimize for AI recommendation engines as well.
Structured, searchable video becomes a competitive advantage in this new environment. Without it, brands risk invisibility in AI-driven discovery experiences.
Video’s Role in Omnichannel Retail
Video commerce is not limited to ecommerce websites. The opportunity extends into physical stores as digital touchpoints expand.
In-store screens, retail media networks, and mobile app integrations create new moments where video can influence decisions. Imagine scanning a product in a store and instantly accessing top-rated video reviews. Imagine dynamic video displays that adjust content based on location or seasonal focus.
As retailers invest in retail media networks, video will increasingly power sponsored placements and personalized messaging across both digital and physical environments.
The boundaries between content and commerce will continue to dissolve.
The Cultural Divide: Speed Matters
Technology alone will not determine the winners in video commerce. Organizational mindset plays an equally important role.
The retailers leading today move quickly. They test, iterate, and deploy. They do not wait for perfect experiences before launching. They measure performance continuously and refine based on data.
By contrast, organizations that over-engineer and delay execution risk falling behind. In a world where platforms introduce new features weekly, speed becomes a strategic advantage.
Video commerce is evolving rapidly. The gap between early adopters and laggards is widening.
The Future Is Personalized and Video-Led
Looking ahead three to five years, the most successful retailers will deliver highly personalized, video-led shopping journeys.
Discovery will begin in AI-assisted environments. Product exploration will be driven by dynamic video tailored to individual preferences. Conversion will be influenced by authentic reviews from relatable customers. Fulfillment will complete the loop with speed and reliability.
Retailers who treat video as foundational infrastructure rather than optional content will capture loyalty and revenue. Those who fail to adapt risk irrelevance in an ecosystem increasingly defined by visual, personalized commerce.
The shift is already underway. Video is no longer just part of the digital front door. It is becoming the front door itself.
The question is not whether video commerce will dominate. It already does.
The real question is whether brands and retailers are ready to build around it.
