Months after gaining traction from over 300 million daily active users, Instagram Stories will now start selling products.
Shopping on Instagram has been evaluated for a long time to make it a profitable social media model. Particularly, Instagram Stories, which arrived as a Snapchat-inspired feature back in August 2016, had started attracting businesses in just one year after its launch. The fresh development has expanded the shopping experience on Instagram as previously its feed was exclusively serving ads to let customers buy new products without leaving the photo-sharing platform.
Starting today, The Facebook-owned company will show stickers with a shopping bag icon on products featured in a story. When you see a shopping bag icon in a Story, then you’ll be able to tap it to get more details about a product before making a purchase if you wish to. A few brands will be able to market their products in this way right away, such as Adidas and Louis Vuitton, with more certain to be added soon. In a post announcing the update, the firm said that it was working with brands like Adidas, Aritzia, and Louis Vuitton among others.
Users will be able to directly learn about products by selecting the new shopping bag icon, upon which they’d be able to get more details and potentially make a purchase. This new feature seems like it’s suited for Instagram content creators who often partner with brands to push products on the platform. The new shopping feature makes it easier to tag multiple products in the same Story.
The shopping function becomes very interesting when it relates to video. Coupled with Instagram’s reported plans to launch its own exclusive longer-length series, it’s plausible to think that one day a person could be watching a show on Instagram, see an actor or social media star wearing or using a certain product, and then tap on the link to buy that item directly.
Although the buy links are free for companies to use, if more customers start shopping through Instagram it could get marketers to move their money to the platform. This click-to-shop feature could be a more compelling way to get to shoppers than a traditional TV commercial, allowing the Facebook company to dip into the nearly $70 billion brands are expected to spend on commercials this year according to eMarketer.
Instagram Stories has quickly become one of the most used features of the platform. This is a incredible measure taken by the company to quickly sought to monetise it offering brands access to ads and now direct product links in Stories.