Instagram's New 'Shop Now' Feature Can Turn Inspiration Into Bookings


Skift Take

Instagram is slowly opening the floodgates for all brands to better market to its highly engaged user base, but it remains to be seen if users will be turned off by this and how it will continue to retain and grow the community.
Over the past two years startups have tried to hack Instagram to make it shoppable, with little success. On Tuesday Instagram put everyone out of their misery and announced the release of a button that lets accounts promote an action to users. These four new direct-response ad formats take after its parent company Facebook's motto of driving real business objectives on its social media platform. Below an Instagram image, users may now see buttons that read "Shop Now," '"Install Now," "Sign Up," or "Learn More." The last call-to-action isn't entirely new. It existed in  Carousel Ads, which followed the introduction of Sponsored Ads to a closed group of advertisers, includin