Southeast Asia’s content commerce market is expanding rapidly, but brands may have to resist the temptation of simply copying more mature models, according to Singapore-based research firm Momentum Works.
In its September report, Live Commerce in Southeast Asia 2026, Momentum Works said content commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) in the region is on track to reach $77.9 billion in 2026 as livestreaming, short videos and content-driven affiliate sales become a larger part of ecommerce.
Combined content commerce GMV across Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada reached $49.7 billion in 2025, up 98 percent year-on-year. Momentum Works estimated that $33.8 billion was transacted in the first half of 2026, putting the market on track for 57-percent growth for the full year.
Content commerce accounted for 37 percent of Southeast Asia’s platform ecommerce GMV in the first half, up from 20 percent in 2024.
The Philippines is among the region’s major ecommerce markets tracked by Momentum Works, alongside Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.
China remains the region’s most developed live-commerce ecosystem and offers lessons in automation, artificial intelligence and data-driven operations, the firm said. However, Momentum Works warned that China’s model cannot simply be transplanted across Southeast Asia.
‘China is a map, not a blueprint for Southeast Asia,’ the report said. ‘Local creator dynamics, consumer behavior and channel economics still require brands to adapt the model market by market.’
‘Brandformance’
Live commerce has moved from an experimental channel to a regular part of ecommerce for many brands and sellers.
The firm, however, expects the unusually attractive returns available today to become harder to sustain as more brands, sellers and creators develop similar capabilities.
‘Live is the easiest format to commit to,’ the report said, because its output is visible and conversion can be tracked immediately.
That convenience, however, can encourage brands to overinvest in livestreaming while underfunding short-video, affiliate and review content that often creates demand before a purchase.
‘A single purchase rarely runs through a single channel,’ Momentum Works said, adding that winning in content commerce requires working across different formats ‘as a portfolio rather than in isolation.’
As competition intensifies and one-off conversions become more expensive, ‘running live well is no longer enough to stay ahead,’ the firm said.
Momentum Works expects current returns to normalize as more brands enter the channel. The longer-term challenge, it said, is combining brand building with conversion, often described as ‘brandformance.’
Artificial intelligence is also changing the economics of livestreaming. In selected cases, AI live operations cost around 20 to 25 percent of a comparable human operation while achieving about 80 percent of human livestream GMV per hour on average, according to the report.