Israel Grintz, CEO of Terrific Live – a white-label social commerce platform backed by Arieli Group – dives into ecommerce 2026, exploring the convergence of content, community and shopping.
The trends shaping ecommerce in 2026 are defined by one core shift: the convergence of content, community and shopping. What’s changing isn’t what people buy. It’s where the decision gets made. These are no longer separate experiences, watching an event, consuming news, and shopping for products. They now happen at the same time, driven by streaming technology, interactive platforms, and rising expectations of consumers.
New solutions are helping brands build ecommerce offerings into social media platforms. Partnerships with publishers and other platforms across the digital world are expanding where brands can show up. Yet, this shift is not just creating more transaction opportunities. The brands that succeed will be the ones that truly understand not just what consumers want, but why. That understanding will shape the sort of content they crave, with sales becoming the natural byproduct.
Live events: from in-person to everywhere (virtually)
The rise of live virtual events has reshaped how audiences experience entertainment and commerce at the same time. Research points to convenience and the ability to multitask as primary factors pushing over 60% of consumers to choose a virtual event over an in-person one. The implication is that the live format is no longer only about the event. It is a high-attention window where consumers are looking to do other tasks, including online shopping, as they watch the event.
That attention is commercially meaningful. Around 80% of live event attendees say they’re open to a brand’s message when they experience something live and that rate rises to 86% for millennials and post-millenials. In these moments, authenticity often trumps polish. A direct-to-consumer beauty brand can run simple, practical live nail tutorials and drive tens of thousands of dollars in sales even with minimalist, low-budget production.
Another common thread in the rise of live events is the clear signal that people crave community and shared experiences around the brands and products they desire. For instance, Rapper Travis Scott’s Fortnite Concert drew more than 27 million live attendees, setting a record for the most-viewed live concert in a video game. Other events extend far beyond the computer screen, from European wine tasting to the Space Force birthday 5k/10k race. They take place wherever participants happen to be, while bringing them together with others in real time.
These formats create space for emotion, identity, and motivation, which is where intent is often formed. When brands understand that, they can learn more about what makes their consumers tick and why they like or want the experiences they do. Those insights are often more powerful than demographic snapshots or post-purchase reporting, because they explain the purchase. With live events showing how emotion opens the door to intent, shared moments reveal how identity determines what people are open to next.
Shoppable experiences: recipes, Llpstick, earphones & more
Another big change is the increasing popularity of shoppable experiences on social platforms, further blending what people are talking about and what they are buying. Take Pinterest, which has been adding multiple different types of shoppable experiences to its offerings. One of the most recent is its partnership with Walmart to pilot shoppable recipes, which will enable the millions of people using Pinterest for recipe and meal inspiration to add ingredients directly to their digital Walmart cart. Other examples include over 1,000 shoppable Pinterest gift guides and a shoppable beauty analysis tool in partnership with a cosmetics company. The changes are geared at converting the inspiration Pinterest is known for into sales.
Another big social brand getting into shoppable experiences is Reddit, which is testing an AI-powered search feature that turns community recommendations for products like noise-canceling headphones or electronic gift ideas into purchases through interactive product carousels with pricing, images and direct purchase links. This creates another one-stop shop for both discussing and engaging in retail shopping.
At the 2026 National Retail Federation show, meanwhile, Google Cloud unveiled an agentic solution to bring shopping and customer service together on a single interface that will be used by businesses including Kroger, Lowe’s, and Woolworths. We can expect this trend of tying various parts of the customer journey together to spread to more grocers and retailers.
Interactive news consumption: the TikTokification of content
Audience behaviour has moved toward short-form vertical video formats that mirror social media platforms as video becomes the dominant medium across the internet. Users are spending an average of 100 minutes per day watching online videos. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram drive 70% higher engagement with short-form clips.
Consumers want the same vertical video experience everywhere they spend time online. This shift has extended to news consumption and publisher strategies. Over 90% of consumers are open to viewing short-form video content on publisher sites beyond social media platforms, while 75 percent said they would stay longer on publisher sites featuring videos tailored to their interests.
Even veteran financial publications like Bloomberg are working to attract younger audiences – especially in Latin America by enabling users to scroll through video content vertically, mimicking the TikTok experience.
Live events, shoppable experiences and interactive news are not separate trends. They are three expressions of a fundamental shift in consumption habits. The old conception of the sales and marketing funnel was neatly divided into discreet stages like awareness, interest, consideration and conversion, but brands must recognise that shoppers’ changing consumption patterns mean those stages are increasingly happening simultaneously.
The brands that will win are not necessarily the ones with the best products – they’re the ones that recognise that the moment of purchase has migrated upstream, into the moment of feeling, belonging and identity that increasingly takes place inside a shared livestream, a recipe carousel or a news scroll.
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