Instagram Is Testing A New 'Shops From Facebook' Feature That Provides Personalized Recommendations Based On User Data Across Facebook Products

Source: Twitter

Instagram is working on a new Shops From Facebook feature, which could be launching shortly.

Discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, Shops From Facebook looks to be a new personalized shopping feature.

According to the screenshot shared by the reverse code engineer, the feature uses available data around a user’s activity across Facebook suite of products to make “recommendations and suggest ads, and other sponsored content” to users, which would be accessed by a ‘View Shop’ button on a profile.

Since the screenshot shows the feature on Instagram’s branded @shop account, it’s possible the feature is specifically for this account. However, since this account is focused on small businesses, this would limit the impact of the feature since the recommendations, ads, and sponsored content surfaced for a user would be based on a much smaller group of products.

Due to this, it makes more sense that it’s available for all brands that are set up with Instagram Shopping and have shoppable products. This would expand the potential number of recommendations, ads, and sponsored content served to a user and ultimately increase the chances of a purchase being made, which is a win for Instagram since they get a cut of any purchases made in-app.

Insights & Analysis:

Through the release of several shopping-related features and tools, Instagram has historically put a lot of effort into not just improving the shopping experience on the platform, but it being a notable part of the overall Instagram experience. Due to the pandemic, its recent efforts have centered around COVID-19 initiatives such as Live Donations and gift cards and donations stickers for Stories.

While some of these have shopping aspects, they are centered around supporting businesses during this challenging time and not strengthening Instagram as a destination for shopping.

Shops From Facebook is more-in line with the shopping features Instagram has launched within the past two years. What makes it exciting and potentially impactful is that it is powered by user data across Facebook-owned platforms and not just Instagram. Since some users may follow and interact with brands differently across channels using data from multiple channels versus Instagram allows the platform to make smarter and more personalized recommendations.

Another notable thing about Shops From Facebook is that it will likely include sponsored content by influencers in its recommendations. Due to influencer-generated content being authentic and relatable and people often looking towards influencers for recommendations, surfacing this type of content increases the chances of users making a purchase or at least considering it.

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