IG owns the Taste Graph. The opportunity is activating it for commerce—not building a mall.
Instagram is where purchase intent forms—more than any other platform. And yet: users screenshot outfits, reverse-image search on Google, hunt products on Amazon. IG generates the demand. Someone else captures the sale.
IG is the Engine of Aspiration—and the moat is the Taste Graph: ten years of engagement data that reveals what users are drawn to, not just what they bought.
Instagram's commerce is embedded, not destination. After Meta retired the Shop tab in 2023, shopping lives in the feed—product tags in posts, shopping stickers in Stories, shoppable Reels, creator affiliate links.
The infrastructure exists: Shops, Checkout, product catalogs. What doesn't exist is a reason to buy here instead of elsewhere.
Core premise: IG is where people discover what they want. The bet is closing the gap between discovery and purchase without forcing users into a mall.
IG is the top of the funnel. The numbers prove it.
| Signal | Data |
|---|---|
| Discovery preference | 61% of social users choose IG first |
| Product discovery | 83% find new products on IG |
| Purchase influence | 54% buy after seeing on IG |
| Speed to purchase | 36% buy within 5 hours of discovery |
| Engagement | 130M monthly shopping post taps |
| Player | Strength | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok | "Find Similar" (late 2024), impulse commerce | Ephemeral content, weaker taste memory |
| Curation culture, high purchase intent | Weak social graph, commerce friction | |
| Google Lens | Scale, cross-platform | Transactional not aspirational, no taste profile |
| Amazon | Transaction infrastructure, inventory depth | No discovery context, purchase history ≠ taste |
Everyone is converging on "find this exact thing." No one has fully productized "find things that fit your taste" at IG's scale.
Users don't come to IG to shop. They come to scroll, and shopping happens. This is the right model—commerce embedded in behavior, not behavior redirected to commerce.
PM Insight: The commerce disappears into the experience. No mode switch required.
78% of consumers say IG creators help them discover new brands. 87% say influencers have inspired a purchase. The creator isn't an ad—they're a filter.
PM Insight: Users trust creators they follow more than algorithms they don't understand. That's a different kind of signal.
Ten years of saves, shares, likes, comments, DMs to close friends. Not purchase history—taste formation. What users lingered on, came back to, sent to people whose opinion they value.
PM Insight: Purchase history tells you what someone bought. Engagement history tells you what they're drawn to. The second is more valuable for discovery.
Shops, Checkout, product catalogs, affiliate links, creator partnerships—the rails exist. This isn't a cold start on commerce infrastructure. It's a distribution problem on a platform that already has distribution.
The Shop tab tried to make IG a place you go to browse products. Users rejected it. IG is a gallery, not a mall. Putting a mall inside a gallery confused the experience.
The lesson: Meta killed the Shop tab in 2023. Destination commerce doesn't fit IG's use pattern.
IG knows what you like but doesn't use it for commerce. Product recommendations are generic—"popular" or "trending"—not "matches your aesthetic." The taste profile exists in the data. It's not productized.
The gap: Amazon uses purchase history. IG could use taste history. It doesn't yet.
When users see something they want, IG gives them no fast path to it. No "find this" button. No visual search. So users screenshot and leave—to Google Lens, Amazon, or the brand's site.
The cost: IG does the work of generating demand, then watches the transaction happen elsewhere.
TikTok wins impulse purchases—$20 gadgets, trending items, "why not" buys. IG has tried to compete on impulse instead of playing to its strength: considered purchases.
The distinction: Impulse = "this is trending, buy now." Consideration = "does this fit my life?" IG is where people think about who they want to be. That's consideration territory.
IG is the Engine of Aspiration. The moat is taste. Passive scrolling creates desire based on identity. It answers: "Who do I want to be?"
This is fundamentally different from transaction-focused commerce. IG doesn't optimize for "what's in stock" or "what's on sale." It optimizes for "what fits my aesthetic." That's a different data signal, a different user psychology, and a different product strategy.
The Shop tab failed because it asked users to change behavior—to come to IG with shopping intent. Embedded commerce doesn't ask users to change. It adds capability to behavior that already exists.
User sees creator wearing jacket → taps → finds jacket → buys. No mode switch. No new intent required.
Amazon knows what you bought. IG knows what you like.
Purchase history is transactional—it tells you what someone needed. Engagement history is aspirational—saves, shares, lingering. That's a different signal, and a harder moat to cross.
The strategic gap is not data availability but productization: IG has built the rails (Shops, Checkout); it has not yet fully wired them into the Taste Graph.
No direct commerce competitor combines ten years of social engagement data with a visual-first feed at IG's scale. TikTok has trends. Pinterest has boards. Google has search queries. None of them have the implicit signal of what you chose to follow, what you sent to friends, what you saved but never bought.
Impulse commerce optimizes for friction reduction—fewer clicks, faster checkout. Considered commerce optimizes for decision confidence—"is this right for me?"
IG's users are in consideration mode. Fashion, furniture, skincare, home decor. Categories where "does this fit my aesthetic?" is the real question. The taste profile serves this buying mode. It doesn't speed up decisions—it increases confidence in them.
What: Tap-to-search on any Reel, post, or Story. AI identifies products, surfaces exact matches or closest alternatives.
Why first: Table stakes. TikTok shipped "Find Similar" in late 2024. Without this, users keep screenshotting and leaving. Stop the leak before building differentiation.
Beyond parity, this is how IG makes the path from "I saw it" to "I can get it" native, so aspiration doesn't leak to other ecosystems.
What: Build a passive taste profile from engagement history—saves, shares, dwell time, close friends interactions. When users search for products, offer a "For Your Style" filter that surfaces items matching their aesthetic.
Why second:
Cold start option: Let users import vision boards or mood boards. AI extracts aesthetic signals and bootstraps the taste profile instantly.
Guardrails are needed so taste models don't entrench only dominant aesthetics; occasional exploration slots (5—10%) keep discovery diverse and fresh.
What: Surface Facebook Marketplace items that match the user's taste profile. User sees aesthetic they love on IG → discovers their version of it on Marketplace.
Why third:
Apply strict filters on aesthetic fit and seller quality so Marketplace surfaces feel like extensions of the feed's aesthetic, not generic classifieds.
What: Native affiliate infrastructure that lets creators tag products with one tap, earn commission, and see what resonates with their audience.
Why fourth:
Differentiate on taste, not just "find this"
Make it opt-in, transparent, user-controlled
Keep commerce native, not forced
Own consideration; don't compete on impulse
One-tap checkout, saved payment methods, Apple/Google Pay
Inject exploration slots (5—10%) for adjacent styles
A purchase where the user engaged with similar aesthetic content in the 30 days prior.
Why this metric: It proves IG isn't just a billboard (impressions) and isn't just a storefront (transactions). It's the bridge between aspiration and action. Growth in WTMP proves the Engine of Aspiration is converting.
To ensure this isn't just attribution improvement, WTMP should rise alongside total GMV attributable to IG-originated sessions, not just replace other last-click channels.
| Metric | Definition | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Taste Profile Depth | Avg. aesthetic signals per user (saves, shares, dwell) | Richness of the data asset. More signals = better matching. |
| Visual Search Usage | % of product discovery sessions starting with visual search | Adoption of the "find this" capability. |
| Discovery-to-Checkout Rate | % of product taps that reach checkout | Funnel health. Measures friction. |
If users are still screenshotting and leaving to Google Lens, the visual search isn't working. This metric must decline for the strategy to succeed.
2B users, #1 platform for discovery, fraction of expected commerce revenue. Access to attention doesn't automatically become access to wallets.
The Shop tab asked users to change intent. They didn't. Embedded commerce succeeds because it doesn't require mode-switching.
Amazon knows what you bought. IG knows what you like. Engagement history is aspirational. That's a harder moat to cross.
Impulse commerce optimizes for fewer clicks. Considered commerce optimizes for "is this right for me?" Different buying modes require different product strategies.
IG is where purchase intent forms. But intent formation isn't value capture. Users discover here and buy elsewhere. That's a leak Meta has tolerated for too long.
IG is the Engine of Aspiration. It answers "Who do I want to be?" through passive discovery that creates desire based on identity. The moat is the Taste Graph—ten years of engagement data that reveals what users are drawn to, not just what they bought.
The Shop tab was the wrong fix. Destination commerce doesn't fit a browsing platform. The right fix is embedded commerce powered by taste intelligence—using the archive to surface products that match what users actually like, not just what's trending.
The path forward: Visual search to stop the leak. Taste profile to create differentiation. Marketplace integration to capture transactions across Meta's ecosystem. Creator tools to activate the trust layer.
None of this requires users to change behavior. All of it requires Meta to activate assets they already have.