Live commerce glossary
The 63 terms that come up most often in day-to-day live, short-form, and video commerce operations.
Each entry goes past the dictionary definition to when and how it is actually used, and what it gets confused with.
Live commerce fundamentals
Retail Media
Retail media is a retailer selling its own shopping surfaces and customer data as advertising — and its strength is that those surfaces sit right before purchase.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing borrows the reach of creators who already have an audience, which earns trust more easily than a brand speaking for itself.
Live Commerce
Live commerce is selling through a real-time video broadcast where viewers can buy without leaving the stream.
D2C Live Commerce
D2C live
D2C live commerce runs the broadcast inside the brand's own store and app rather than on a marketplace or social platform, so the customer data and the margin stay with the brand.
Omnichannel Commerce
Omnichannel commerce runs the web store, app, physical stores, and social channels as one connected experience, so a customer gets the same information and offers wherever they start.
Social Commerce
Social commerce is discovery and purchase happening inside platforms like Instagram or TikTok — strong on reach, but the customer data stays with the platform.
Video Commerce
Video commerce is the umbrella term for selling through video — live, short-form, and one-to-one video consultation — with live commerce as one format within it.
Live operations
HLS
HTTP Live Streaming
HLS delivers video as short file segments over ordinary web servers and CDNs — the widest compatibility of any method, at the cost of higher latency.
Low-Latency HLS
LL-HLS
Low-latency HLS shortens HLS delivery to roughly 2–5 seconds by splitting segments into smaller parts, keeping HLS compatibility and CDN economics while tightening real time.
PIP
Picture-in-Picture
PIP shrinks video into a small floating window so viewing continues while the person looks at something else — in commerce, it lets shoppers browse products without leaving the broadcast.
OS-Level PIP
Playback outside the app
OS-level PIP is the operating system's own picture-in-picture: playback continues even after the viewer leaves your app for another one.
Mobile SDK
A mobile SDK is the development kit that adds capabilities like live or short-form video into an iOS or Android app, so watching and paying happen without leaving it.
WebRTC
WebRTC lets browsers and apps exchange video and audio in real time with sub-second latency, without routing through a conventional streaming pipeline.
Low Latency
Low latency means shrinking the gap between what the camera captures and what the viewer sees — in live commerce, the condition for conversation and for fair ordering.
Streaming
RTMP ingest
Streaming ingest is the process of sending video from a camera or encoder to a streaming server over a protocol such as RTMP so it can be delivered to viewers in real time.
Video Subtitles
Video subtitles render speech as on-screen text so viewers watching with the sound off, and viewers in other languages, can still follow the content.
Intro & Outro
Intro and outro are the holding screens shown at the start and end of a live broadcast; they reduce drop-off before the show and direct viewers to a next action after it ends.
Live Replay
VOD
Live replay re-serves a finished broadcast on demand, converting viewers who missed the live window and making round-the-clock programming possible.
Live Pop-up
A live pop-up is an overlay shown on top of the broadcast — a notice, coupon, or product detail — used to prompt an action without interrupting viewing.
Live Quiz
A live quiz poses a question during the broadcast and rewards correct answers instantly, lifting both dwell time and chat participation.
Live Coupon
A live coupon is a discount issued in real time only to viewers of a broadcast, creating a reason to buy now rather than later.
Live Chat
Live chat is the real-time channel where viewers ask questions during a broadcast and the seller answers immediately, resolving hesitation at the moment of purchase.
Live Host
The live host presents the broadcast, explains products, and answers viewer questions — one of the biggest determinants of whether a broadcast converts.
Live Auction
A live auction is a commerce format where bidding runs inside a live video broadcast, and viewers bid, win and pay without leaving the screen.
Video & Short-form
Shoppable Video
Shoppable video is video with product information and a buy action attached, so viewers can purchase without leaving the player.
Interactive Video
Interactive video lets viewers tap or choose to change what happens next, and unlike passive video it leaves behind a record of what they responded to.
PDP Video
Product detail page
PDP video is short product video placed on the product detail page to clear up what photos and copy leave unanswered, right before the purchase.
UGC
User-Generated Content
UGC is photo, video, or review content created by actual customers rather than the brand, and it typically earns more trust than advertising.
Highlight Clip
A highlight clip is a short-form video cut from the strongest moments of a longer live broadcast so the content keeps working after the stream ends.
Social Video Import
Social video import automatically turns videos you already posted to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts into short-form content on your own storefront, with no re-uploading.
Short-form Commerce
Short-form commerce attaches products to vertical videos of roughly a minute or less, shortening the distance between discovery and purchase.
Product pages & Selling
Product Detail Page
PDP
A product detail page (PDP) is the page where all the information and the buy action for a single product come together — the place where the purchase decision actually happens.
Product Listing Page
PLP
A product listing page (PLP) shows many products side by side — a category or search results view — and its job is helping the shopper narrow the field.
PDP Optimization
Product detail page
PDP optimization is the work of finding and removing whatever blocks a purchase on the product detail page — raising revenue without buying more traffic.
Cross-Selling
Cross-selling is recommending a different product that works well with the one the customer already chose, in order to raise the value of a single order.
Upselling
Upselling is offering a higher tier or larger size of what the customer is already looking at, raising order value within the same visit.
Customer Data
Personalization
Personalization is shaping which products and screens a customer sees based on their history and preferences, instead of showing everyone the same shelf.
First-Party Data
First-party data is information a brand collects directly from customers on its own channels, and it becomes the core asset for repeat-purchase marketing after third-party cookies go away.
Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is information customers deliberately volunteer — through surveys, polls, or preference choices — making it more accurate than behavioral data that has to be inferred.
Commerce metrics
Live Shopping Conversion Rate
CVR
Live shopping conversion rate is the share of viewers who bought, and because its denominator differs from a product page's, it only compares against itself.
PDP Conversion Rate
PDP conversion rate is the share of product detail page visitors who purchased — the most direct read on how persuasive a single product page is.
Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is getting more purchases out of the traffic you already have, rather than buying more of it.
Shoppable Video ROI
Shoppable video ROI is the profit a video generates against everything it cost — and it only approaches reality when platform fees and internal time are included.
Conversion Rate
CVR
Conversion rate is the share of visitors or viewers who actually purchase, and it typically runs higher in live commerce than on a standard product page.
Average Order Value
AOV
Average order value is the mean amount spent per order — total revenue divided by number of orders — and it rises with bundling and upselling.
Concurrent Viewers
Concurrent viewers is the number of people watching at the same moment — unlike cumulative viewers, it reflects both real-time momentum and server load.
Engagement Rate
Engagement measures how much viewers actually react — chat, likes, quiz entries, product taps — and it predicts purchase intent better than raw view counts.
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend
ROAS shows how much revenue each unit of ad spend produced — ad revenue divided by ad cost — and it is the standard yardstick for judging live commerce ad efficiency.
GMV
Gross Merchandise Value
GMV is the total value of transactions over a period before cancellations, returns, and fees are deducted, which makes it different from revenue.
LTV
Customer Lifetime Value
LTV is the total profit a customer generates across the entire relationship, which distinguishes it from average order value — the size of a single order.
CTR
Click-Through Rate
CTR is the share of impressions that resulted in a click, and in live commerce the product card click rate is the clearest signal of purchase intent.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the share of arrivals who leave without taking any action; in live commerce it means viewers who enter the broadcast and exit almost immediately.
View Completion Rate
View completion rate is the share of viewers who watch to the end — a direct driver of algorithmic distribution in short-form, and a measure of structure in live.
AI & Search
Generative AI
Generative AI produces new text, images, video, or speech from what it has learned, and in commerce it is used mostly for content production and customer response.
AI Generated Content
AI generated content is text, images, or video produced by a model rather than a person — fast to produce, and still yours to fact-check and disclose.
AI Avatar
An AI avatar is a synthetic on-screen presenter that introduces products or answers viewers in place of a person, enabling round-the-clock and multilingual operation.
Ecommerce Chatbot
An ecommerce chatbot answers shopper questions automatically, resolving last-minute hesitation without a person in the loop.
Agentic Commerce
Agentic commerce is buying where an AI agent — not the shopper — searches, compares, and completes the purchase, which means product information has to be machine-readable to be considered at all.
AI Shopping Agent
An AI shopping agent understands a shopper's requirements and finds and recommends products on their behalf, which makes being chosen by the agent — not just by the person — the new challenge for brands.
Conversational Commerce
Conversational commerce carries a customer from question to purchase through chat or voice, with live chat and AI chatbots as its most common forms.
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization
AEO is optimizing so that AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity cite your content as a source — unlike SEO, the goal is being included in the answer rather than ranking above it.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization
GEO is the practice of designing content and structured data so a brand appears in the information generative AI draws on when composing an answer; it is used almost interchangeably with AEO.
AI Chat Moderation
AI chat moderation automatically filters non-compliant or inappropriate messages from live chat before a human has to intervene, which is what makes live broadcasting viable in regulated industries like healthcare and finance.