According to Facebook research, nearly four-in-five (78%) of online purchases already are happening on its mobile interfaces. I am sure this stat is not shocking to anyone as most of us have fallen prey to Insta-commerce at least once. Despite the fact that as a long time agency vet with the “insider knowledge” on how targeting works, I am still weak against the charms of my favorite influencers peddling products (as evidenced by my Goli gummies, Prose shampoo, Marine layer pants, etc.). To capitalize on this ever-growing trend, Facebook this morning is unveiling a series of commerce-driven ads and features on both Facebook, and Instagram.
Beginning with the start of the holiday shopping season, Facebook will rollout “Ads With Product Tags On Instagram,” which will it easier for advertisers and small businesses to tag products so consumers can discover products and shop for them by driving traffic to product detail pages embedded on Instagram.
Facebook says the new features are based on beta testing by a group of advertisers who have been using it for about a year, and effective today it’s available to all advertisers via Instagram’s "Ad Manager." Another new feature being rolled out today, “Shopping Engagement Custom Audiences,” enables advertisers to create custom audience profiles to target users who have already demonstrated an interest in their product or brand by taking specific actions such as “saving a product,” viewing a shop or initiating, but not completing a purchase.
Instagram also is enabling advertisers to extend the reach of those explicit purchase intent users by offering “Shopping Lookalike Audiences” that matches them with others with similar profiles in its user base. Meanwhile, Facebook’s main platform will introduce a “Discount Feature for Facebook Shops,” which create traffic among users looking for deals, discounts and other price-based sales promotions.