771Despite the advancement of the Tuke divestiture bill, the platform’s pace of commercialization and the involvement of ecosystem participants have not diminished.
On March 14, US time, the day after the House of Representatives passed the bill, Tuke held a large-scalehome lifestyle influencer and brand eventin Los Angeles, inviting many well-known American institutions and local brands to join. The co-founder of Outlandish also participated in the event, and in a media interview, she stated that the bill’s actual impact on influencers is not significant.
In September 2023, Tuke officially implemented a fully closed-loop shop policy in the US, and since its implementation, it has achieved breakthrough development.
According to FastMoss data, during the “Black Friday” shopping season, Tuke Shop’s single-day GMV exceeded $33 million. With over 150 million users, Tuke’s explosive power in the US market can be compared to Douyin’s growth dividend period from 2018 to 2019.
In the development of Tuke e-commerce, influencers undoubtedly play a crucial role. Many MCN agencies have stated that currently, the GMV of Tuke Shop in the US mainly comes from influencer-driven sales—this proportion was close to 80% in 2023. These influencers, who possess content creation abilities and sales potential, are unleashing tremendous monetization capabilities from traffic.
The fully closed-loop model of Tuke Shop in the US means that influencer business activities have become more transparent, and the monetization model is gradually shifting from CPM (cost per mille) to CPS (cost per sale). Partner merchants not only gain exposure opportunities but can also track ROI with clear data, while influencers can directly experience the power of “explosive orders.”
The concepts of MCN agencies and influencers originally came from the US, but sales-driven influencers first rose to prominence in China. Early collaborations between Weibo influencers and Taobao merchants, and later the integration of content platforms and e-commerce platforms, all promoted the close connection between Chinese influencers and e-commerce. In the US, influencers are more accustomed to monetizing through spoken ads and embedded ads on Instagram and YouTube. Now, Tuke has opened up a brand new monetization channel for them.
Facing the huge market potential of the influencer economy in Tuke’s US sector, a new batch of MCN agencies has emerged, including many Chinese entrepreneurs venturing overseas. They are trying to introduce the Chinese influencer economy model to Tuke, guiding influencers into the new e-commerce fields of short video and live-streaming sales to meet the needs of both influencers and merchants.
However, American influencers have a high degree of freedom and autonomy in content creation, linguistic diversity, and low acceptance of live-streaming sales, which pose significant challenges for these MCN agencies. They face an entrepreneurial path that is both hopeful and challenging.
It was not until last September, when Tuke ended its beta test and officially opened its fully closed-loop e-commerce model, that these MCN agencies and influencers, with accumulated experience, achieved more ideal development.
Currently, short video content on Tuke US is relatively mature, and the influencer ecosystem is more complete, with the number of influencers far exceeding other country sites, roughly on par with YouTube. After the launch of Tuke US’s fully closed-loop e-commerce model, more influencers have entered the sales field. However, the growth in the number of influencers with sales ability and fulfillment capacity still cannot meet the ever-increasing demand from merchants.
It is roughly estimated that there are currently about 600,000 US influencers with sales records, most of whom have random sales frequency, and more than 20% have unsatisfactory fulfillment capabilities.
In fact, in the field of sales-driven influencers on Tuke US, top influencers with a monthly GMV of $1 million are very rare; most are mid- and lower-tier influencers. These influencers, whether in terms of sales rate or conversion rate, cannot meet the needs of many US small shop merchants who hope to quickly scale up through influencers, resulting in an overall market shortage.
US monthly influencer ranking, image source: DidaDog
In the sales track,follower count does not directly equate to purchase conversion rate, but is more related to the fit between the product, the fan base, and the target market. For example, this February’s top-selling influencer, PokeGram, achieved a GMV of over $2 million with only 35,800 followers, while the second top-selling influencer had 430,000 followers.
The threshold for becoming a sales-driven influencer on Tuke is not high, and can even be called “low”—as long as an account has 5,000 followers, it can independently activate sales permissions, and even accounts with zero followers can contact the official AM to apply for sales permissions. However, for most influencers just starting to try sales, their account tags may not be accurate, making it difficult to be pushed to target users and to gain traffic and inquiries.
Simon, a Tuke US small shop seller, once said that many Tuke US influencers have unstable commercialization, and the GPM (sales per thousand views) of mid- and lower-tier influencers fluctuates greatly, so merchants need to use a “mass approach” to identify suitable influencers for cooperation. He gave an example: two short videos from the same influencer, both with 3,000 views, one might bring in over $100 in sales, while the other brings none, so it’s impossible to assess an influencer’s sales ability based solely on video views.
At the same time, the supply shortage also leads to complaints from Tuke US merchants about influencers: influencers often lose contact, have low cooperation, ask for high prices, and provide poor-quality materials, especially when merchants provide free samples for influencers to shoot. Usually, merchants and influencers only reach verbal agreements and do not sign specific contracts, making it difficult to effectively constrain influencer behavior, and it is common for influencers to not produce videos after receiving samples.
However, Simon expressed understanding: “Merchants need to connect with dozens or even hundreds of influencers for each product, and all hope to prioritize those with ideal sales performance, resulting in these influencers’ inboxes being flooded with private messages.” He also emphasized that influencer-driven sales have huge explosive power; for example, a short video he collaborated on with an influencer broke $10,000 in sales within three days, and orders continued for a long time afterward.
In fact, short videos and influencer agencies are not new in the US. As early as 2009, a group of YouTube channel owners began acting as intermediaries between content creators and the YouTube platform, aggregating PGC content to help creators ensure continuous output and stable commercial monetization, mainly through advertising. Following the development model of Chinese social e-commerce, Tuke was the first to realize the integration of content and e-commerce, providing American influencers with another monetization channel.
In addition to advertising, Tuke content creators can directly attach a “yellow cart” in short videos and live streams to drive sales through content. Currently, in Tuke US influencer sales videos, most content that achieves explosive orders is authentic, even rough and unpolished UGC content, with little PGC content with IP advantages.
The most common viral video format is:influencers use a selfie perspective with their phones to share their experience using the product, in everyday settings such as at home, in the car, or in bed, using personal and down-to-earth real footage to endorse the product. At this stage, users do not have high requirements for content, and improving the quality of influencer videos is not necessary; many influencers can achieve monetization with simple visuals and language.
One headache is the diverse linguistic environment and multicultural groups in various countries. For example, to reach Spanish-speaking influencers, you must find a Spanish-speaking influencer manager to communicate. More importantly, every successful influencer actually represents their influence within a certain cultural group, which may be defined by language (such as Spanish speakers), by country of origin (such as Asian Americans), or by social identity (such as former college students now homeschooling).
Moreover, although e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay, and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Tuke, have all entered the live-streaming sales market, there are no “super influencers” in the US market.
Despite the dual challenges of policy and market, Tuke’s commercialization process and e-commerce ecosystem in the US continue to flourish, especially with the implementation of the fully closed-loop shop policy yielding significant results. Influencers, as an indispensable part of the e-commerce ecosystem, have become a key force in driving sales and brand exposure with their sales and content creation abilities. However, the scarcity of influencer resources and instability in cooperation have also exposed some problems. To sustain and promote the healthy development of the e-commerce ecosystem, Tuke’s future focus should be more on optimizing influencer cooperation mechanisms, improving content quality, and more accurately matching influencers with target markets.
