Meta updates ad priorities, FB and IG shops to take a hit from August

Business in the Asia Pacific (APAC) will soon be unable to host a shop on their Facebook and Instagram pages or use product tagging in their posts from 10 August this year unless it has a shop checkout enabled in the US. This comes as Meta doubles down on ensuring its ads tools are as performant as possible through AI-powered automation in order to ensure that the right ads are delivered to the right people at the right time. 

In a statement, Meta reveled that this means that it will be focusing attention and resources on products such as Advantage+ shopping campaigns, messaging, and Reels, which drive the highest performance and ROI, and give shoppers the most personalised experience.

"Businesses in APAC will no longer be able to host a shop on their Facebook or Instagram page or use product tagging in posts, except in seven markets," it said. These seven markets include Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand. These are markets where checkout will likely be launched in the future, according to Meta. 

"In those select markets we’ll continue to support shops without checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled to make the transition as easy as possible," it said. 

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For APAC businesses outside these seven countries, they will no longer be able to host a shop on their Facebook or Instagram page, unless the shop has checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled in the US.

"Businesses without an accessible shop will no longer be able to use features associated with shops including product tagging in posts, Reels, or Stories, and creating new custom/lookalike audiences derived from people who visited a shop," it said. 

On Instagram, ads with product tags will continue to be available as a solution to enable new and existing customers to discover a shop's products at scale via an experience that is independent of Shops.

Businesses actively leveraging ads with product tags do not need to take any action and their campaigns will continue uninterrupted.

Meta added that the location of a given shop will be determined based on the location of the commerce account that it is associated with. The location of the commerce account will be determined by the location of the user that created the account if the account was created after 1 April 2023.

Revamping its commerce priorities

Meta's update on shops in the APAC region comes as the platform looks to revamp the shopping experiance on its social media sites. Recently, it announced that Instagram would be revamping its navigation bar once again and this time, it would be making a strategic, and possibly significant decision by removing its shopping tab from the main bar at the bottom of its screen. The Reels tab will now replace the shop tab.

While this may seem new, Instagram actually began testing out a main feed without the shopping button from September last year when it attempted to simplify the user experience. The test was part of a larger pivot away from its shopping features, according to an internal memo seen by The Information. Saying that, shopping is still part of the app. It simply will no longer have a prominent spot on the home feed.

“You will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences that provide the most value for people and businesses across feed, stories, reels, ads and more,” Instagram said on its support page.

ome in. That's the advantage,” Zeng added.

He continued by saying that unfortunately, Meta is yet to grow its market share in social commerce to a point where it can go all in. “There have been reports about how Meta has over-estimated the growth of Instagram Shop amidst COVID-19 and now that countries are re-opening, the growth has slowed down drastically. It also doesn't help that Meta has been facing multiple calls to make Instagram Instagram again, and to stop trying to be TikTok,” continued Zeng.

Shopping in real life still has the charms

"I think Instagram is already behind with its in-app shopping experiences, which could have led to this decision. I personally, have never purchased anything off an Instagram shop, whereas I actively shop on Tiktok, whom I believe, is way ahead of Instagram in social commerce experiences," shared Kimberley Olsen, the director of Yatta Workshop, a creative digital agency that specialises in social media management.

She continued by saying that this was likely why Instagram is not succeeding in its bid to enter social commerce the way TikTok is. "Social commerce has taken a very different route from a simple buy button. Users now are treated to 'shoppertainment', a term coined by TikTok, with live sales and flash sales, product introductions videos and demos. We have seen how influencers and celebrities are already hopping on the live sales format and users definitely love seeing their favorite influencers live and enjoy engaging with them directly. This format has proven to have made a large, positive impact on its audience," Olsen continued. 

We have come to an age of social where content is more demanding and so perhaps, a simple shop button is no longer as compelling. 

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