New Ways to Drive Product Discovery and Purchases Across Facebook Apps

Commerce is not new to Facebook — inspiring people to discover the businesses and products they love through ads and shopping experiences is a part of the fabric of our apps. Today, we’re introducing new ways to discover and purchase products across our apps by:

• Bringing shops to more places and making it easier for shoppers to discover and consider new products and brands
• Building new ad products to help personalize the shopping journey
• Investing in forward-looking technologies to power the shopping experience of tomorrow

Bringing Shops to More Places

We’re continuing to make it easier for people to discover and buy from shops, and providing businesses with new ways to reach customers where they’re already shopping. Once your shop is set up, your products will be eligible to appear in popular shopping destinations like the Shop tabs on Instagram and Facebook. And in the US, businesses with a Shop can choose Marketplace as an additional sales channel, helping them drive discovery of their products in a shopping destination that more than 1 billion people globally visit each month. Finally, we'll give businesses in several countries the option to showcase their entire Shop in WhatsApp so shoppers can easily browse inventory, get product information and chat about specific items before making a purchase.

We always want shoppers to feel confident in the purchases they make, so we’re giving people more information before they buy. Over the next few months we’ll expand ratings and reviews to products in Shops on Instagram. Soon you’ll see photos and videos from the community, too. These changes will help people make more informed decisions on what to buy, and will let businesses know if they are meeting customer expectations.

Personalizing the Shopping Journey with Ads

Personalized ads are often the beginning of the shopping journey and businesses want to offer shopping experiences that are seamless and personalized. That’s why we’re introducing Shops ads solutions that provide unique ads experiences based on people’s shopping preferences. For example, we’re testing the ability for businesses to send shoppers to where they are most likely to make a purchase based on their shopping behavior, such as a curated collection from a shop or on a business’ website. In the future, we’ll explore ways to help brands further personalize their Shops ads by providing special offers or promotions to select shoppers.

This builds on existing tools for business that help them find the right audience like Shopping Custom Audiences and ads with product tags, which enable businesses to send people to their shop directly from an ad. Ads with product tags launched last year and is already seeing great results. Take Korean hair care brand GrowUs for example, who saw 3X more purchases after testing Instagram video ads with product tags. Businesses can also now also add product tags to their campaigns including dynamic ads and Branded Content ads to promote creator content. And small businesses can easily promote their organic posts with product tags using Instagram Promote. Together, this suite of personalized Shop ads solutions can help businesses move customers from discovery to purchase.

Finally, we’re building additional features for Collaborative Ads, which allow retailers to easily and partner with brands on Facebook. Now, retailers and marketplaces can offer expanded targeting options to their partner brands and sellers to reach beyond people who have already expressed an interest. And, brands can now promote organic creator posts that drive customers to a retailer’s website so they can easily buy.

Introducing New Technologies to Power the Future of Shopping

We’re bringing the magic of the in-store shopping experience to mobile to help shoppers get a better feel for the fit of a product before they purchase, with Augmented Reality and Live Shopping. For starters, we’re making it easier for brands to create AR try-on experiences in shops through new API integrations with partners Modiface and Perfect Corp. And we’re introducing AR in dynamic ads that will automatically show relevant products to people based on their interests and allow them to try on products before they buy.