Dive Brief:
- Facebook unveiled an update today to its collection feature that lets people share groups of content they have saved directly with friends on the platform, according to details provided to Marketing Dive.
- Once shared, friends become contributors and can edit or add posts to the collection. For example, a user can create a collection of products serving as a holiday wish list, which can be shared with a selected group of friends or family to give them gift ideas.
- Collections could also be used for party planning by connecting a group of friends. Users could add holiday recipes that they’ve discovered on Facebook and share them in the collection.
Dive Insight:
Giving Facebook users the ability to make gift wish lists and plan parties could encourage shopping on the platform and attract advertisers seeking to reach holiday shoppers. Facebook launched the collection feature about a year ago to help users easily save, organize and find posts from friends, ads, videos, a Marketplace listing or other content. Today's update make Facebook collections more collaborative, with the tool’s usefulness extending beyond the season for vacation planning, wedding registries or home decorating.
The collection format is similar to a Pinterest pin board in that it serves to curate inspirational content around specific themes. Facebook also offers collection ads, which are popular with marketers, and updated these recently as well, including allowing advertisers to send shoppers from collection ads to an instant storefront template where they can automatically organize products into personalized groups. The company said the tool helped brands see a 9% boost in conversions.
Facebook is clearly looking to make its platform a bigger part of consumers' holiday shopping plans. As consumers gear up to spend at least as much or more this holiday season, more than half of shoppers are planning to shop for gifts online via computers and 42% are planning to use mobile devices, according to Citi Retail Services. This year’s holiday shopping season is also expected to be more social than in the past, with 39% saying they would use “buy buttons” and 25% use shoppable photos to shop via mobile, per an eMarketer report.
The role of social media platforms like Facebook in holiday shopping is expected to be as big as ever this year and even grow in some cases. To reach consumers on social platforms, marketers are increasing their budgets for social media stories and maintaining or increasing budgets for traditional holiday ads, such as Google and Facebook.