Southeast Asia’s e-commerce story is no longer just about search bars, discount vouchers and marketplace rankings. Increasingly, shoppers are discovering what to buy through livestreams, short videos, creator reviews and affiliate content. And that shift is now large enough to reshape the region’s online retail economy.
Content commerce gross merchandise value across Shopee, TikTok Shop, and Lazada reached US$49.7 billion in 2025, almost doubling from the previous year, according to Momentum Works’s latest report, Live Commerce in Southeast Asia 2026. The Singapore-headquartered research and venture outfit estimates that US$33.8 billion was transacted in the first half of 2026 alone. If the current pace holds, the segment is on track to hit US$77.9 billion for the full year.
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The more telling number is not just the headline GMV, but content commerce’s share of the region’s e-commerce mix. In the first half of 2026, it accounted for 37 per cent of Southeast Asia’s platform e-commerce GMV, up from 20 per cent in 2024. In other words, what was recently treated as an add-on marketing channel has become a major sales engine.
For founders, brands and marketplace operators in the region, this marks an important turning point. Southeast Asia’s e-commerce markets — from Indonesia and Thailand to Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore — have long been shaped by mobile-first behaviour, price sensitivity, and high social media usage. Content commerce sits at the intersection of all three. It makes shopping more entertaining, but also more immediate: a product demo, a creator recommendation, and a checkout button can now sit within the same customer journey.
Live commerce moves into the operating core
Live commerce has been the most visible part of this shift. The format allows sellers, creators, and brands to demonstrate products in real time, answer questions, and trigger purchases through limited-time offers or platform vouchers. In categories such as beauty, fashion, household goods, and fast-moving consumer products, it has become a daily operating channel rather than a campaign experiment.
Momentum Works notes that for many brands, the question is no longer whether they should go live, but what role live should play in the broader business. Some use it mainly for conversion, pushing volume during platform sales days. Others use it to educate consumers on new products, build trust in unfamiliar brands, or move slower-selling inventory.
That distinction matters because live commerce does not work equally well for every product. A low-priced lipstick, snack bundle, or kitchen gadget can benefit from quick demonstrations and impulse buying. Higher-consideration purchases may need more education, reviews, and repeat exposure before a customer checks out. Execution quality also matters: the host, script, pacing, product assortment and incentives can materially affect sales.
For now, the returns from live remain attractive for many operators. But Momentum Works argues that these returns are unlikely to stay unusually high forever. They are being supported by growing consumer attention, platform incentives and a competitive environment that is still maturing. As more brands, agencies, sellers and creators develop similar capabilities, the cost of standing out will rise.
The next battleground: brandformance
This is where “brandformance” enters the conversation. The term, a blend of brand building and performance marketing, captures a problem many e-commerce teams face: short-term conversion can be measured instantly, but long-term consumer preference is harder to track.
Live commerce is naturally performance-driven. A seller can see how many viewers joined, how long they stayed, which products were clicked and what was purchased. That makes it appealing in a region where marketing budgets are often tied closely to measurable outcomes. But if every brand is running live sessions with similar scripts, discounts and affiliate networks, performance alone becomes easier to copy.
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The longer-term advantage may sit with companies that use content not only to sell, but to build memory and trust. That could mean explaining why a skincare product works for humid climates, why a halal-certified food product matters to Muslim consumers, or how an electronics brand supports after-sales service in provincial cities. In fragmented Southeast Asian markets, where language, culture, logistics, and purchasing power differ widely, local relevance is not a minor detail.
The challenge is that many brands still treat live commerce as a standalone sales machine. It is visible, measurable and relatively easy to justify internally. Short videos, affiliate reviews and community content can be harder to attribute, even when they play a crucial role in creating demand before the livestream begins.
AI lowers the cost of execution
The report also points to a structural change that could compress the advantage of skilled operators: AI live. In selected cases, Momentum Works says AI-driven live operations cost around 20-25 per cent of a comparable human setup while achieving around 80 per cent of human livestream GMV per hour on average.
That has significant implications. Capabilities that once took agencies, brands, and livestream studios years to build (scripting, scheduling, product explanations, host consistency, and basic audience interaction) are becoming more accessible through technology and platform tools. For smaller sellers, this could lower the barrier to entry. For larger brands, it could reduce operating costs and allow more always-on content.
But it also creates a strategic problem. If everyone can access similar tools, operational capability alone becomes less defensible. The differentiator shifts to what cannot be automated as easily: product quality, customer insight, creative direction, creator relationships, community trust and brand positioning.
This matters in Southeast Asia because the region’s ecommerce growth has often been fuelled by intense marketplace competition and subsidised demand. As subsidies normalise and consumer acquisition becomes more expensive, brands will need more than efficient livestream operations. They will need reasons for shoppers to return without being pulled only by the next discount.
China offers lessons, not a template
China remains the global reference point for live commerce. Its ecosystem is more mature, with advanced livestream infrastructure, professional creator networks, high-frequency shopping behaviour and deeper use of data and automation. Southeast Asian platforms, brands and sellers have borrowed heavily from that playbook.
Yet Momentum Works cautions that China should be seen as a map, not a blueprint. Southeast Asia is not one market. Creator economics in Indonesia differ from Singapore. Consumer trust patterns in Vietnam may not mirror those in Thailand. Payment habits, logistics reliability, local languages and platform dynamics vary sharply across the region.
That means the next phase of content commerce will likely be less about copying a single model and more about adapting formats market by market. A livestream strategy that works in Bangkok may need to be rebuilt for Manila. A short-video approach that drives discovery in Jakarta may not translate neatly to Ho Chi Minh City.
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The broader lesson is clear: live commerce has become infrastructure, but it is not the entire content commerce strategy. As the channel matures, brands that over-invest in live while under-funding short video, affiliates and review-led discovery risk mistaking the checkout moment for the whole customer journey.
For Southeast Asia’s digital economy, the US$77.9 billion forecast is a sign of how quickly shopping behaviour is changing. The next question is not whether content will shape e-commerce, but who can turn attention into durable customer relationships once the easy growth fades.
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