Facebook-owned Instagram hopes its platform can drive market research and shopping. On Tuesday, the company said it will let brands tag products in in-feed images.
The pilot will run throughout the holiday season with 20 select US retailers, including brick-and-mortars like J. Crew, Coach and Macy’s, as well as digital-native brands like Warby Parker and JackThreads.
Instagram is testing two things, said Vishal Shah, Instagram director of product management: how consumers interact with the deeper information in a post, and whether Instagram drives consumers with intent to purchase.
When a user clicks on a tagged product in an image, he or she is sent to either an in-app browser product page or to the partner’s app. Clicking on a Warby Parker post featuring sunglasses, for instance, opens a layer over the post where users can shop and explore product details.
Neither Instagram nor Facebook own the actual shopping platform, however. When someone buys a Kate Spade product, she leaves her credit card information with the manufacturer. Similarly, Macy’s – not Instagram – would recognize a loyalty club member.
It’s a mistake, Shah said, for digital publishing platforms to also try being the buying platform. He said Instagram wants to be the jumping-off point for “serendipitous discovery of something you weren’t already looking for,” and said competitors that have taken a direct-shopping-portal approach “missed the middle magic of shopping, which is to browse, understand options and then decide what you want.”
Instagram’s pilot is a response to all the user comments hoping to identify products seen in images.
“This service is a natural extension of that organic intent and interest that’s already there,” he said.
Because Instagram is using the product-tagging pilot for learning purposes, retail partners aren’t paying for it.
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That’s an attractive offer for the first round of partners, but don’t expect Instagram to forgo profits once it figures out the best way to drive shoppers.
“We’ll be tracking post-click conversions to understand where value is had and what pieces of information are useful for our community [i.e., what kinds of product details result in sales],” Shah said. “This is just a test, but there’s an option here to think about how this fits into our ad formats.”
