Novel videos influenced $41M in brand revenue during BFCM, proving the impact of automated shoppable video at scale
partnrUP, the AI-powered creator commerce platform, announced its acquisition of Novel, a leading Shopify video app built to help brands deploy UGC, influencer content, and social-first video across their storefronts to increase shopper engagement and conversion. The acquisition brings high-impact creator and UGC video directly ecommerce DTC websites – automating content distribution, personalization, and revenue attribution for brands like Ridge, Bloom Medicube.
What This Acquisition Unlocks
The latest partnrUP acquisition of Novel brings together two critical pillars to unlock social commerce: creator content and on-site conversion.
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Brands today invest heavily in UGC and influencer partnerships, yet much of that content lives off-site on social platforms where discovery happens, but where purchase decisions are rarely finalized. Novel changes that by making high-performing social and creator videos easy to deploy directly into Shopify storefronts.
Brands shouldn’t have to guess which creator content drives revenue.”
— Jessica Thorpe, CEO of partrnrUP
With Novel now part of partnrUP, brands gain access to a single system that can ingest, manage, and activate creator video across the entire shopping experience. From product pages to collections and landing pages, video becomes a conversion-driving layer of the storefront rather than a disconnected asset library.
Why This Matters for Brands Right Now
Commerce is increasingly visual, social, and trust-driven. Static product pages are no longer enough to answer shopper questions, especially as product categories become more competitive and crowded.
Video does what photos and text cannot. It shows products in motion, demonstrates real-world use, addresses objections, and builds credibility through authentic voices. Yet most brands struggle to operationalize video on-site at scale due to technical complexity, bandwidth constraints, and lack of clear measurement.
This acquisition directly addresses those challenges by eliminating friction across three of the biggest barriers brands face:
* Distribution: getting video into the storefront without slowing site performance or relying on development resources
* Relevance: ensuring the right video appears with the right product at the right moment
* Measurement: understanding which videos actually drive engagement, conversion, and revenue
By combining Novel storefront-native video experiences with AI-driven creator workflows, brands can finally treat video as a system -not a one-off experiment using the partnrUP platform.
How the Combined Platform Impacts Brands
Top-performing UGC and influencer videos sourced from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or created in house can now be activated directly within Shopify in minutes. No custom builds. No engineering overhead. No tradeoffs between performance and speed.
Once live, those videos become shoppable, dynamic elements of the purchase journey. Product detail pages evolve from static information hubs into immersive, trust-building environments where shoppers can see the product in action and gain confidence before buying.
“With Novel, we’re completing the loop from creator discovery through on-site activation and sales attribution. This is a major step toward a fully automated, social commerce experience where the right video content meets the right shopper every time,” Jessica Thorpe, CEO of partrnrUP.
Proven Retail Impact
The model is already delivering measurable results.
RIDGE, a leading Shopify Brand and Novel customer with world renowned YouTube content creator Marques Brownlee as an investor and chief Creative Partner, shared how on-site video changed the way their audience connects with the brand:
“Once we installed Novel we immediately launched a split test, said Michael De Lia,” Sr. Manager Ecommerce. “The addition of Novel UGC on our site resulted in a 2.55% lift in sitewide conversion. Running an old theme, we were stoked to start hosting dynamic video content on our site without sacrificing speed.”
These results are consistent with other customers, including Shopify DTC brand Lineage Provisions. Their 41.4% revenue improvement on their Classic Meat Sticks page demonstrates what’s possible when content resonates with the specific audience and product context.
Leadership Perspectives
Joe DeWulf, CEO and Co-Founder of Novel, emphasized the strategic alignment behind the acquisition:
“Novel was created to bridge the gap between social discovery and the point of purchase. We wanted brands to be able to showcase their best creator content right where buying decisions actually happen. Becoming part of partnrUP lets us take that idea to a completely new level. Together we can give brands a smarter, more automated way to turn video into trust, engagement, and measurable revenue.”
Toward Fully Automated Video Commerce
At its core, this acquisition is about removing manual effort from a process that should be intelligent, adaptive, and revenue-driven.
As partnrUP integrates Novel more deeply into its platform, brands can expect a future where:
* Creator and UGC videos are automatically ingested and organized
* Products are matched to relevant content without manual tagging
* Different shoppers see different videos based on behavior and intent
* Performance data informs both content creation and distribution
* Video becomes a continuously optimized conversion engine
The result is a storefront experience that feels alive, personal, and purpose-built for how people actually shop.
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