1/9/20 - The Rise of Instagram as a Shopping Destination for Consumers and Brands

From the Simplr studios in San Francisco, this is your daily briefing.  

Introduction

This is Today in Five, for today, Thursday, January 9th. Here are today’s headlines in digital disruption.

As social commerce grows, Instagram is starting to establish itself as a shopping destination through new features and capabilities. Will 2020 see the rise of Instagram as one of the top shopping destinations for consumers and brands?

First, here are the latest headlines.

Goop Products Becoming Available in Sephora Stores

Gwyneth Paltrow’s popular lifestyle brand, Goop, will now feature products in Sephora stores. It’s the first time the wellness brand has partnered with another retailer to sell items like its vitamin chews and body scrubs. Until now, Goop was only available at its own stores, on its website, and at some independent beauty shops. Starting Tuesday, select Goop products will go live on Sephora’s website and on February 28th, Goop’s skin care line with be sold at select Sephora stores across the country.  The companies said other Goop products will launch at Sephora in the coming months. For Goop, partnering with Sephora should help put the brand in front of more people.

Highsnobiety Launching First Pop-up

Streetwear focused media brand, Highsnobiety, is taking its first step into physical retail as a standalone brand. The direct-to-consumer brand is partnering with London department store, Selfridges, to launch its Co.Lab pop-up that will be open through February 9th. Highsnobiety’s use of pop-ups will allow the brand to maintain relevance over time. Launching pop-ups will create a regular sense of novelty that encourages its fan base to shop both in-store and online.

NBCUniversal Accelerating Single Ad Technology Efforts

NBCUniversal said it is accelerating its efforts to create a single ad technology and sales infrastructure for marketers to run media plans across its TV and digital properties and across local, national, and global markets. The efforts center on One Platform, which will combine existing tools for advertisers to plan, schedule, optimize and measure video ad campaigns. Previously, NBCUniversal had separate tools for traditional linear TV and digital advertising, forcing it and its advertisers to combine orders manually. The news comes as TV networks try to update how they sell ads to better compete with digital media. NBCUniversal will announce a new global ad sales infrastructure in a few weeks as part of the One Platform rollout.

The Rise of Instagram as a Shopping Destination for Consumers and Brands

As brands and influencers have flocked to Instagram, the social media platform is starting to become a major direct-to-consumer sales channel. Instagram has continued to create and extend its shopping features to more companies, and social-savvy direct-to-consumer brands, many of which got their start on the platform, will no doubt take advantage of the tools. For consumers, the ability to shop various brands within one app would eliminate the impracticality of bouncing from one site to the next, placing orders for one product or category of products at a time. For brands, it would mean landing sales right at the consumers’ point of discovery.  

Instagram is laying the groundwork to be a powerhouse DTC shopping destination, perfecting shopping features like Buyer Protection before attempting to scale them. In 2019, Instagram also debuted a number of shopping tools, including in-app Checkout, Shopping from Creators, and a drop countdown to build hype before a product release.  

The product lead for Instagram Shopping said  “Our goal is to become a leading mobile e-commerce destination that helps you shop your interest, inclusive of when shopping is your interest.” The goal isn’t farfetched, with over 80 percent of Instagram users already saying the app helps them make purchasing decisions. And according to 2018 data from Adobe, social media was the fastest-growing driver of e-commerce referrals from 2016 to 2018.  

Closing

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Thanks for listening to this latest episode of Today In Five. We’ll see you tomorrow.