Social Shopping Moves

Instagram has globally launched e-commerce functionality on its short-form video platform Reels.

Shoppable products that appear in Reels feature real-time “tap to shop” functionality.

The NBA is one of the first sports brands to experiment with shopping on Reels.

• The league created a shoppable Reel for this year’s City Edition collection
• Instagram-driven City Edition sales more than doubled compared to last year’s launch 

Reels’ shopping update comes after the Milwaukee Bucks recently became the first pro sports team to integrate Instagram Checkout with their account. Their 2019/2020 NBA MVP Collection saw 22% of transactions occur via the service.

Julian Edelman, Damian Lillard and the Chicago Bears have tapped into Instagram Checkout as well.

Shopping War: Reels joins a list of social media platforms that are making shopping tools available to sports brands.

In September, Champs Sports offered virtual sneaker try-ons through SnapML, a machine learning technology that Snap introduced in June.

• Champs’ augmented-reality experience had an average share rate of 8% among Snapchat users — five times higher than the average for retailers using conventional Snapchat lenses.

Instagram Checkout is expected to generate $10 billion in revenue by 2021.