Shopping Your News Feed
Holiday shopping this year will be quicker and easier than ever, with the increased number of social media platforms introducing ‘shop-able’ posts and functions. Instagram pioneered the trend, announcing last summer that that they were granting companies the privilege of posting ads that appear on feeds. For the first time, this allowed links to take users outside of the app to buy the products in the photo they’re used to so routinely scrolling past.
Pinterest quickly followed suit with their ‘buyable pins,’ which enabled users to search for products within specified parameters, such as price range and color. As a result, retailers could drive sales straight from their posts.
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The newest addition to the convenience-shopping rat race is YouTube. The video platform is rolling out new ad products that will allow any video to become shop-able. This is especially beneficial for brands that have numerous ‘review’ or ‘unboxing’ videos for their products. Previously, brands could only add this function to their own created videos, but the new feature allows them to link from eligible videos, regardless of the creator, through an auction for the ad space. [Source]
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With the constantly increasing use of mobile devices, platforms are taking advantage of the time millennials spend on social and networking apps. The data accrued from active users allows companies to better target and market to their consumers. (People have even been matched with pizza on the dating app Tindr!). Social media has become integrated into lives and routines, and for some millennials, they can’t remember a time when social media did not exist. Even now, the social media landscape is becoming more visual-based, with Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook at the forefront of this trend. People are spending more time sharing this visual content than they are creating it. Thus, it’s no surprise that companies are focusing their efforts on creating a quick and seamless transition from daily media “checks” to – you got it – sales.
