How many hours have you spent on Instagram this week? What, at first, might seem like an absurd question becomes shockingly realistic when iPhone users are greeted by their weekly screen time reports every Sunday morning, with users spending over 30 minutes a day on Instagram on average. For over 2 billion users worldwide, the app initially known as a fun, simple platform to connect with friends through cropped sepia-toned photos of beautiful landscapes and hipster eateries has become a one-stop shop for all your social media needs — literally. Absorbing elements of Snapchat, with Instagram stories, Vine and TikTok, via Instagram reels, and promoting Meta’s X alternative, Threads, Instagram has truly become a jack of all trades platform for a staggering number of people around the world. You can easily spend hours scrolling through reels, sifting through your explore page, or catching up on the messages (often more reels) your friends have sent. As a cross-generational platform, boasting users from Gen Alpha to Baby Boomers, Instagram has more eyeballs seeing more content, and more fingers clicking on more links, than almost any other internet platform. In other words, it’s a marketer’s paradise.
Facebook Marketplace has gained prominence in recent years, especially in the United States, as a major online secondhand market, an updated Craigslist so to speak. After Meta’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012, just two years after the social media platform launched, the parent company of Facebook has molded Instagram increasingly in its own image. Nowhere is this more obvious and impactful than the rise of what we can call “Instagram Marketplace”.
Now, the “marketplace” feature on Instagram is quite distinct from its Facebook equivalent. In fact, they are completely different models. Facebook Marketplace functions much like Craigslist, as previously mentioned, where users post products, often used, for sale at discount prices, aimed at potential buyers nearby who can come pick up the items directly from them. It is a secondhand market.
The ecommerce component of Instagram blends seamlessly into the existing model of the app, as sponsored content appears in users’ homepage feeds in almost identical formats as the posts of people they follow. Users can filter the posts they see exclusively by those they follow or favorited accounts, but if you simply scroll through your homepage, you will see a mix of posts from people you follow, AI algorithm-recommended posts (perhaps posts your friends liked), and sponsored content. This sponsored content is essentially advertisement, coming in two forms. It is either an ad directly from a brand’s Instagram page, often linked with their Facebook profile as well, in which a product on offer is being promoted, including a handy link that sends you to the product page with just one click. There is also sponsored content driven by “influencers”, in which companies partner with popular Instagram accounts to promote their products, further blurring the line between a normal Instagram post and a clever advertisement.
Functionally, both of these forms of advertisement achieve the same goal, by placing products companies want users to buy directly in their feed, and in a format practically identical to the posts uploaded by their friends. It takes an extra second for users to process the fact that what they’re seeing is even an ad at all, as while they are marked as “sponsored”, the format and style of the ads resemble normal posts so similarly that they demand user attention. It’s the perfect storm for companies to ensure their target audience sees their products, and makes it easier than ever for potential customers to purchase their items. Traditional forms of advertisement, be they billboards, television or radio commercials, or ads on a subway, don’t act as a portal to the product, but social media advertisement makes this possible.
As companies adjust to more eyeballs glued to Instagram and other social media platforms, rather than to televisions, their marketing budgets have shifted accordingly. 70% of customers on the hunt for new purchases use Instagram to either find the products they’re looking for or simply get an idea of what’s available. That’s an astounding portion of motivated customers, which helps explain why nearly 10% of all digital advertisement expenditure in the US goes through Instagram. And with the app being the most popular social media platform for Gen Z, companies who want to attract customers in both the short and long term see the use of the platform to familiarize this key demographic with their brands.
The impact of online shopping becoming not only normalized but popular through social media sites will be felt throughout the supply chain. The trend of increasing ecommerce purchases will only expand as consumers turn not only to their favorite brands’ and retailers’ websites to shop, but have the ease and convenience of making new purchases while scrolling through Instagram. More effective and targeted advertising campaigns via social media will also place greater pressure on the supply chain to meet the demands of a world soon to be dominated by ecommerce. This will place greater strain on shipping and delivery logistics, particularly in the Last Mile, and necessitate new innovations and practices from logistics companies to connect businesses with their customers around the world. The marriage of social media and ecommerce will only further popularize both, and send more products across the globe.
