Rethinking Commerciality: How Content Commerciality Contributes to YouTube Beauty Content Performance

Creative expression is no longer separate from monetization. It is increasingly structured by the business models that platforms provide. Content monetization has evolved rapidly: early models focused on advertising revenue, followed by brand partnerships, and most recently, the integration of commerce-oriented features at the platform level. YouTube, for example, launched its YouTube Shopping service in South Korea in June 2024, enabling creators to sell products directly through their content. This development demonstrates that commerciality has become intrinsic to the creator economy. While prior research has emphasized factors such as authenticity, less focus has been placed on commerciality itself. This study addresses this gap by analyzing how varying levels of content commerciality affect performance, using real-world data from a Korean YouTube beauty creator agency (N = 286 short-form videos). The analysis tests the effects of three revenue models (organic, sponsored, and content-driven commerce) and two content types (context-focused and product-focused) through multiple regression. Results reveal a trade-off between engagement and revenue, as while content-driven commerce generates significantly higher engagement than sponsored content, it yields lower immediate revenue. Regarding content strategy, contrary to expectations, product-focused content consistently outperforms context-focused content in driving engagement, except within sponsored videos where a context-focused approach effectively mitigates the negative impact of overt commercial intent. These findings demonstrate the divergent efficacy of monetization models and content strategies in the short-form ecosystem. By empirically validating the relationship between commerciality and performance, this study advances theoretical discussions on the platform-driven creator economy and offers practical insights for creators, brands, and platforms navigating this evolving environment.