TikTok Shop Captures Discovery and Checkout
ShopMy
The core threat is that TikTok Shop turns the creator into just one input inside a much bigger transaction machine. On ShopMy, a shopper usually sees a creator post, taps out to a link page or affiliate link, then lands on a merchant site to buy. On TikTok Shop, the video, product ranking, payment flow, and repeat discovery all stay inside one feed, which lets TikTok capture both demand and checkout while weakening the value of the external link layer.
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ShopMy still depends heavily on external social platforms for traffic, even though it now supports over $1B in annual GMV across 200,000 creators and 1,200 brand partners. That scale is meaningful, but it sits on top of Instagram and TikTok distribution that ShopMy does not control.
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TikTok Shop is structurally stronger than a normal affiliate program because it combines recommendation, merchandising, and checkout in one loop. ByteDance has already shown how powerful this can be, with TikTok Shop estimated at $19B of global sales in Q3 2025, including $4B to $4.5B in the U.S.
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Google points to a second form of disintermediation. Its AI Mode shopping experience uses Gemini plus the Shopping Graph to suggest products, compare options, and in some cases even complete a purchase on the merchant site with agentic checkout. That shifts discovery from following creators to asking a machine what to buy.
The next phase of this market is a fight over who owns the shopping session, not just who supplies product links. ShopMy's Circles app points in the right direction because it tries to make curated shopping a destination with its own repeat traffic. The winners will be the platforms that keep discovery, intent, and purchase behavior inside the same product loop.