The Halo Effect

The future of social commerce: why trust will decide who wins

By HALO Studio · Updated 8 November 2026

Social commerce is where buying is heading: people discover products in content, from creators they trust, and increasingly want to buy without leaving it. In India, creators already influence hundreds of billions of dollars of spending a year, yet most sales still finish on a different app, and most creators earn little from the demand they create. The platforms that win next will close that gap, and they will win on trust: real products, shown as they are, with money handled fairly.

Content now decides what people buy

Shopping used to start with a search. Increasingly it starts with a reel, a short video or a live stream. The numbers on this are large, even allowing for the usual optimism of market reports.

• India's creators influence $350–400 billion of consumer spending every year, and that is expected to pass $1 trillion by 2030, according to the Boston Consulting Group report From Content to Commerce, released at WAVES 2025 (PIB).
• It is no longer just a big-city, Gen Z habit. The same report finds that more than 60% of consumers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns say creator content influences what they buy (IBEF).
• Worldwide, content and checkout are merging. TikTok Shop's global GMV is estimated at about $64 billion in 2025, roughly double 2024, and live shopping made up a growing share of its US sales (DemandSage, citing Momentum Works). In China, live commerce is estimated at more than 18% of online retail (VoxBooster, citing ECDB).

How big is social commerce in India?

Estimates for social commerce itself vary widely, because each firm defines it differently. Some count only sales completed inside social apps, and others count any purchase a social platform influenced.

These are research-firm and consulting estimates, not audited data, and they disagree by a factor of ten. What they agree on is the direction: social commerce in India is growing much faster than retail as a whole.

The gap between creators, brands and audiences

If creators already move this much money, why does the system feel broken? Because the three people involved in each sale rarely see the same thing.

• The audience sees a product in a video, then has to leave, search for it on a marketplace, and hope it is the same item. Along the way they lose the context that convinced them, and often the trust.
• The creator generates the demand, but the sale finishes somewhere else. Credit gets lost, commission statements arrive late and do not explain themselves, and income is unpredictable. BCG estimates that only 8–10% of India's 2–2.5 million active creators monetise their content effectively (BW Marketing World).
• The brand pays creators and sends out free samples, but cannot easily tell which creator actually sold, or what happened to the products it shipped.

Each side is working with partial information, and each assumes the others are getting the better deal. That is a trust problem, and it is the real opportunity.

Customers value what is real

Audiences have become sceptical of polished, exaggerated promotion. The research is consistent on this:

• In a 2025 BBB National Programs survey of more than 3,700 US consumers, 58% had bought something because of an influencer, yet only 5% trusted influencer content completely, and 70% said they felt negatively when they found out a creator had been paid or given free products without saying so (BBB National Programs).
• Harvard Business Review notes research in which 88% of consumers say authenticity matters, while nearly half believe most influencers are fake (HBR).
• A June 2025 Clutch survey found that 53% of consumers trust a recommendation less when the influencer is paid (Clutch).

These surveys are mostly of US consumers. Indian data on trust is thinner, but the pattern shows up in every market: people buy from creators, and they punish anything that feels fake.

The lesson for anyone building in social commerce is simple. Exaggeration converts once. Honesty converts again. Showing the product exactly as it arrives, saying clearly when something is sponsored, and protecting the buyer's money do more for repeat sales than any filter.

What a better system looks like

A social commerce platform that works for everyone needs to do five things:

1. Put the checkout inside the content, so the shopper never loses the reason they wanted to buy.
2. Show products as they are. No beauty filters or effects that make a product look different from what arrives.
3. Protect the buyer's money until the order arrives and has been checked, so buying from a new seller is not a leap of faith.
4. Pay creators in a way they can read: a commission fixed at the moment of purchase, plus income such as memberships that does not depend on every single sale.
5. Show brands what worked: which creator, which video and which city drove each sale, and what happened to every sample.

How an ecosystem makes money

When those pieces work together, every party has a reason to stay, and the platform earns from activity rather than from one side's loss.

• Creators earn a commission on sales they drive, with a higher rate as they grow, plus recurring income from paid memberships.
• Brands get sales from creator reach and stop wasting samples on creators who do not sell, because the data shows who does.
• Shoppers get confidence: real products, protected payments and a clear way to raise a problem.
• The platform earns a small share of each order and each membership. That only works if the other three keep coming back.

This is also how new opportunities appear. A creator with a loyal niche audience can become a real business. A small brand can reach buyers in towns where it has no shop. A shopper in a Tier 3 town can buy from a creator they trust, with the same protection as a big marketplace.

Where it is heading

• Live and video shopping will keep growing, following the path already seen in China and in TikTok Shop's growth.
• Smaller towns will drive much of India's growth. A Google and Deloitte report expects creators to bring 60 million first-time online buyers in Tier 2+ markets by 2030, and to influence 30% of retail spend (Unicommerce).
• Trust will become a product feature, not a marketing line: clear disclosure, protected payments and honest media.
• Creator income will become more diverse and more predictable, mixing commission, memberships and brand partnerships.
• Brands will measure creators like any other sales channel, and spend accordingly.

How Tornado approaches it

Tornado is a social commerce platform designed and engineered by HALO Studio. It is three connected apps, for shoppers, creators and brands, that share one live state, so a change in one shows up in the others straight away. It is built around the gaps above:

• Buying inside the content. Shoppers add to cart from a short video or a live stream, and the product shelf updates the moment a creator pins something mid-live.
• No filters. Shots, posts and lives are published as captured, with no colour filters, beauty effects or AR, and creators confirm this before every publish.
• Protected payments. The shopper's money is held through shipping and delivery, followed by a 7-day inspection window. A dispute can be raised before anyone is paid.
• Earnings creators can read. Each order's split is fixed at the moment of purchase. In the build's defaults, creators earn 3%, 5% or 6.5% depending on their tier, and keep most of each membership fee.
• Samples brands can track. Every free sample moves through Scheduled, Packed, Dispatched and Delivered, with the courier and due dates, and each creator request comes with a recommendation.
• Results everyone can see. Creators and brands see sales, funnel, top products, cities and creator return over 7, 30 or 90 days.

The front end is complete, with its money rules and order states covered by automated tests. A live launch adds the backend, payments, video and logistics for your market.

The short version

Content already decides what India buys. The money is there, and so is the demand. What is missing is a system where the audience, the creator and the brand can all trust what they see. The next generation of social commerce will be built on that trust, and the businesses that build it early will own the relationship.