Instagram’s new shopping bag icon adds ecommerce element to advertisers’ Stories

Instagram is giving a select number of ecommerce brands a new feature to help with their ecommerce efforts on the platform. Starting today, certain advertisers can add a shopping bag icon to their Instagram Stories that will display more details about the featured product.

Clicking on the shopping bag icon can display various types of product information, including more images of the featured product, images of other products contained in the story, descriptions and pricing information for the product and links that lead directly to the brand’s website to purchase the product.

The announcement says users can shop from “select” brands in Instagram Stories, with more coming soon, so the shopping bag icon does not appear to be available to all advertisers at this time.

Instagram reports 300 million users take advantage of Instagram Stories daily. Results from a recent user survey found people watch Stories to learn more about “… brands they’re interested in, get an insider view of products they like, and find out about new products that are relevant to them.” According to the company, 33 percent of users said they were more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on Instagram Stories.

Some brands — specifically direct-to-consumer brands — are finding more value in Instagram Stories versus their Facebook ad campaigns, according to Digiday. One advertiser reported that it was redirecting ad dollars from its Facebook budget to Instagram after discovering Instagram Stories CPMs had become half the cost of its in-feed Facebook ads.