Why is Social Commerce Important?

What is Social Commerce and Why Does It Matter?

At Skai, we view social commerce through two essential lenses:

1. Platform-integrated shopping: Transactions that occur directly within social platforms like TikTok Shop and Instagram Shop, including collaborations between retailers (Amazon, Walmart) and social platforms that enable in-app purchases.
2. Broader commerce journey: Social media’s role throughout the entire consumer journey, driving traffic to established retailers and blurring the line between content consumption and shopping.

Unlike traditional ecommerce, which requires multiple touchpoints and platform switches, social commerce creates a seamless path from discovery to purchase. Whether transactions occur directly within platforms or through strategic handoffs to retailers, both approaches deliver value by eliminating friction and transforming casual scrolling into tangible business outcomes.

The significance of social commerce extends beyond convenience. It represents a fundamental shift in how consumers make purchasing decisions. Research shows that 58% of American consumers have bought a product after seeing it on social media, while approximately 100.7 million shopped directly on social media platforms in 2024. These aren’t isolated behaviors but indicators of a broader trend where social validation, visual discovery, and frictionless transactions converge to create a powerful new retail paradigm.

For marketers, social commerce matters because it addresses a critical challenge: connecting upper-funnel awareness with lower-funnel conversion. Rather than treating these as separate activities requiring multiple handoffs and attribution challenges, social commerce creates a continuous, measurable journey that more accurately reflects modern consumer behavior. This is especially valuable for retail media marketers looking to expand beyond lower-funnel tactics.

Want to learn more about social commerce and how it diverges from traditional online shopping? Explore our detailed breakdown: What is Social Ecommerce?

The Evolution of Social Commerce

Social commerce didn’t emerge overnight but evolved as platforms recognized their position in the consumer journey. What began as basic affiliate links has transformed into a sophisticated ecosystem featuring native checkout, real-time inventory synchronization, and creator-driven marketplaces that seamlessly blend content with commerce—all powered by increasingly sophisticated advertising capabilities.

This evolution accelerated dramatically during the pandemic, compressing years of development into months. Pinterest expanded shoppable pins, Meta introduced Shops, TikTok partnered with Shopify, and Snapchat invested in AR try-on experiences—strategic pivots that established social platforms as legitimate retail channels.

Unlike traditional ecommerce’s linear path (need → research → comparison → purchase), social commerce thrives on discovery, emotional connection, and impulse conversion. It captures consumers when they aren’t actively shopping but can be persuaded through compelling content and social proof. This shift reflects changing consumer values, particularly among younger demographics who prioritize authenticity, community validation, and immersive experiences over clinical product specifications. They demand products shown in context, validated by real users, and available for immediate purchase without disruption.

Stay ahead of evolving social media marketing trends and discover the future of social commerce.

Building a Strategic Social Commerce Approach

For retail media marketers looking to capitalize on social commerce, a strategic approach should address four key areas:

• Treating social platforms as standalone storefronts: Beyond just another advertising channel, social platforms now function as complete shopping destinations with their own unique customer experiences. Developing a cohesive presence across relevant platforms helps brands meet consumers where they naturally spend time.
• Leveraging commerce-optimized advertising formats: Platforms have developed specialized ad formats that drive direct commerce outcomes. These formats—from TikTok’s Product Catalog campaigns to Instagram’s shoppable posts—blend content and commerce in ways that traditional ads cannot match.
• Implementing comprehensive measurement solutions: Social commerce requires new measurement approaches that connect platform activity to retail outcomes. This includes attributing both direct sales and the influence social media has on purchases made through other channels.
• Applying cross-channel insights: Data from social commerce can inform broader marketing strategies, from audience targeting to creative optimization to product marketing decisions. The most successful brands use these insights to create cohesive experiences across all customer touchpoints.

Key Social Commerce Platforms and Features

The social commerce landscape continues to evolve rapidly across major platforms, each with distinctive approaches and capabilities:

• TikTok Shop: With over 135 million active users in the United States alone, TikTok has quickly become a commerce powerhouse. Its TikTok Shop feature enables creators to tag products, host live shopping events, and fulfill orders directly within the app. Recent partnerships with Amazon allow users to purchase Amazon products without leaving TikTok, significantly reducing friction. Features like “Smart+ Ads” leverage AI to optimize creative selection, bidding, and targeting for maximum conversion.
• Pinterest: Focusing on facilitating transactions rather than owning them, Pinterest serves as a powerful discovery and inspiration engine. The platform drives high-intent outbound clicks to advertisers, creating valuable handoffs to retailer websites that enable robust downstream measurement and remarketing. Its commerce infrastructure includes shoppable Product Pins with live pricing, AR try-on tools, and catalog integrations with major platforms like Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The platform’s users show exceptionally high commercial intent, with over 50% viewing Pinterest as a shopping destination.
• Snapchat: Taking a camera-first approach to commerce, Snapchat focuses on immersive discovery experiences that drive high-value intent. Its product catalog integrations and AR Shopping Lenses allow brands to connect SKUs to 3D try-on assets and overlay real-time pricing. While most transactions are completed off-platform, Snapchat’s value lies in sending highly qualified shoppers to product detail pages, enabling downstream remarketing and measurement.
• Instagram and Facebook Shops: Meta’s platforms offer perhaps the most comprehensive commerce infrastructure, with integrated checkout, product tagging in organic content, and sophisticated ad formats like Dynamic Commerce Ads. Shops function as complete storefronts, while creator marketplace tools enable influencer-driven sales with transparent attribution.

Each platform’s approach reflects its unique audience behaviors and content formats, requiring marketers to adapt strategies accordingly rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach to social commerce.

The Growing Impact of Social Commerce on Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior has undergone a profound transformation with the rise of social commerce. The traditional linear purchase funnel has collapsed into a more dynamic, non-linear journey where discovery, consideration, and purchase often happen simultaneously. Social media platforms act as both the starting point and the closing environment for commerce, fundamentally reshaping expectations around convenience, validation, and brand interaction.

Research from Accenture projects global social commerce will grow three times faster than traditional ecommerce, reaching $1.2 trillion this year. This isn’t merely shifting existing sales from one channel to another—it’s expanding the total addressable market by capturing purchase intent that wouldn’t materialize in traditional environments.

Mobile Shopping and Social Media Integration

Mobile commerce and social commerce have become inextricably linked, with about two-thirds of online shopping orders coming from smartphones. Social media platforms have capitalized on this behavior by designing shopping experiences specifically optimized for mobile interactions—intuitive swipes, minimal form fields, and persistent shopping carts that make conversion frictionless.

The average American spends over two hours daily on social media apps, most of it on mobile devices. This attention concentration creates an unprecedented opportunity for brands to engage consumers where they’re already spending time. As the adage goes, “advertisers follow eyeballs,” and mobile social platforms now command more eyeballs for longer periods than almost any other media channel.

The integration of payment methods has further streamlined mobile social commerce. Stored payment credentials, digital wallets, and one-click checkout options remove traditional barriers to mobile conversion. Platform-specific innovations like Instagram’s visual checkout and Pinterest’s “shop the look” pins are engineered specifically for mobile behavior patterns, recognizing that even minor friction leads to abandoned purchases in mobile environments.

The Role of User-Generated Content and Reviews

Social commerce thrives on social proof, with user-generated content serving as a powerful conversion driver. Unlike professional product photography, which consumers have learned to view skeptically, authentic user content creates trust and relatability. According to Bazaarvoice, 62% of shoppers are more likely to purchase a product if they can see customer photos and videos first.

Reviews within social commerce environments serve a dual purpose: validating purchase decisions and providing valuable feedback for algorithmic product recommendations. This creates a virtuous cycle where engagement with reviews improves the platform’s understanding of user preferences, leading to more relevant product discovery.

Creator content occupies a middle ground between brand messaging and pure UGC, offering both authenticity and production quality. TikTok reports that 67% of users say creator-driven content has inspired them to shop even when they weren’t planning to do so. This influence is particularly potent in categories like beauty, fashion, and home goods, where visual demonstration overcomes purchase hesitation.

Benefits and Opportunities for Businesses

Direct Access to Target Audiences

Social commerce provides unprecedented access to granular audience segments based on interests, behaviors, and affinities rather than broad demographic traits. This precision targeting capability allows brands to reach exactly the right consumers with relevant products at the optimal moment.

Retail media excels at capturing active product searchers, paid search captures explicit intent, and social platforms complement these channels by enabling brands to identify and engage potential customers who haven’t yet expressed direct purchase intent. Together, these channels create a comprehensive approach that addresses every stage of the customer journey. The social commerce component delivers valuable upper-funnel interactions, often at lower costs, while establishing brand positioning earlier in the consideration process.

The targeting capabilities extend beyond basic demographic and interest segments to include lookalike modeling, engagement-based audiences, and cross-platform retargeting. This allows brands to build sophisticated customer acquisition funnels that nurture prospects from initial awareness through consideration and conversion, all within the social ecosystem.

Enhanced Customer Engagement and Loyalty

Social commerce transforms transactional relationships into ongoing conversations. Unlike traditional ecommerce where interaction typically ends at purchase, social media platforms enable continuous engagement through content, community, and direct communication channels.

This persistent connection creates opportunities for post-purchase support, cross-selling, and advocacy cultivation. When customers follow a brand on social media after purchasing, they enter an engagement cycle that increases lifetime value through repeated exposure to new products, exclusive offers, and community reinforcement.

The community aspect shouldn’t be underestimated. Social commerce naturally facilitates user-to-user interactions around products, creating powerful social validation. When consumers can see friends and trusted influencers using and recommending products, it significantly lowers purchase barriers and enhances brand perception.

Streamlined Purchase Journey and Reduced Friction

Traditional ecommerce often requires 7-10 touchpoints before conversion. Social commerce can compress this journey dramatically, sometimes enabling purchase within seconds of product discovery. This efficiency addresses cart abandonment, a persistent ecommerce challenge.

Social commerce reduces friction through two complementary approaches: maintaining the consumer within a single environment from discovery through checkout or by creating seamless handoffs to retailer websites. Each approach offers distinct advantages—in-platform transactions provide immediacy, while retailer handoffs enable more robust measurement and remarketing opportunities. TikTok’s in-feed product links, Instagram’s tap-to-buy photo tags, and Pinterest’s direct product handoffs to retailer checkouts represent ongoing efforts to make the path from inspiration to purchase as seamless as possible.

Data Collection and Omnichannel Insights

Social commerce generates uniquely valuable first-party data that spans the entire customer journey. Unlike siloed retail or website data, social commerce insights connect upper-funnel engagement metrics like video views and likes with lower-funnel actions like add-to-carts and purchases.

This connected data enables more sophisticated attribution modeling and audience building. Marketers can identify which specific content formats, creators, or messaging approaches drive eventual conversion, even when the path isn’t linear. These insights can then inform creative strategy, targeting refinements, and budget allocation across the full marketing mix.

As third-party cookies phase out and mobile identifiers become more restricted, social platforms’ first-party data environments gain additional strategic importance. They offer persistent identity resolution and behavioral tracking within privacy-compliant walled gardens, preserving measurement capabilities that are diminishing in other digital channels.

Social Commerce Best Practices

Choosing the Right Platforms

Platform selection should be driven by audience alignment and product category fit rather than generic user numbers. Each major social media platform has distinct demographic strengths, engagement patterns, and commerce capabilities that make it more suitable for specific marketing objectives.

Begin by analyzing where your current and potential customers already spend time and show engagement. This often reveals significant differences from overall platform popularity rankings. For example, while TikTok has a broader reach, Pinterest might deliver higher intent for home décor brands targeting specific life stage audiences.

Consider product characteristics when evaluating platforms. Visually-driven categories like fashion and beauty typically perform better on Instagram and Pinterest, while demonstration-focused products might see stronger results on TikTok and YouTube. Technical or complex offerings usually benefit from platforms that support longer-form content like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Social commerce features must also factor into platform decisions. Some brands require native checkout capabilities, while others prioritize seamless handoffs to their own ecommerce environment. Evaluate whether a platform’s specific implementation aligns with your fulfillment capabilities, inventory management systems, and customer service infrastructure.

Advertising as the Foundation of Social Commerce Success

While organic social content plays a role in building brand presence, advertising is the true engine of scalable social commerce success. Strategic ads enable brands to:

• Target high-intent consumers with precision
• Scale reach beyond organic limitations
• Test and optimize content formats rapidly
• Drive measurable commerce outcomes
• Connect social engagement to retail sales

The most effective social commerce advertising strategies align creative formats with platform-specific shopping behaviors. For example, TikTok’s Product Catalog campaigns leverage the platform’s discovery-driven nature, while Pinterest’s shopping ads tap into users’ planning and consideration mindset.

Increasingly, retail media marketers are recognizing advertising’s critical role in social commerce—preliminary results from our State of Retail Media 2025 report indicate that brands plan to significantly increase their social commerce advertising investments in the coming year, particularly as these channels prove their value in driving both direct and influenced sales.

Engaging Your Audience

Effective social commerce requires content specifically designed for the platform environment rather than repurposed from other channels. Each platform has unique creative formats, audience expectations, and engagement patterns that directly impact commerce performance.

Content authenticity outperforms polished production in most social commerce contexts. Conversion rates increase significantly when products are shown in realistic usage scenarios rather than idealized settings. This authenticity principle extends to language, with conversational, benefit-focused messaging typically outperforming formal product descriptions.

Engagement strategies should prioritize interaction over passive viewing. Questions, polls, and calls for user content all drive higher retention and consideration than purely broadcast messaging. These engagement signals also feed platform algorithms, improving organic distribution and reducing effective cost-per-reach over time.

The Future of Social Commerce

Social commerce isn’t merely growing—it’s actively reshaping consumer expectations around the entire shopping experience. Several emerging trends indicate where this evolution is headed:

AI-powered personalization is rapidly advancing, with platforms using vast engagement datasets to predict individual preferences with increasing accuracy. TikTok’s predictive engine already demonstrates the ability to surface products that are aligned with user interests, often before users explicitly express those interests. As these systems mature, the discovery aspect of social commerce will become increasingly tailored to each user’s unique preferences.

Cross-platform commerce ecosystems are also emerging, with platforms partnering to create seamless handoffs rather than closed environments. TikTok’s Amazon integration, Pinterest’s retail partnerships, and Snapchat’s focus on directing traffic to retailer product pages all reflect a recognition that consumers expect fluidity between platforms rather than artificial boundaries.

Perhaps most significantly, generative AI is beginning to transform how consumers discover products. Rather than scrolling through endless options, social media users can describe what they want and have AI curate personalized recommendations, even for items they didn’t know existed. This shift from browsing to intention-based discovery will profoundly influence how brands position themselves in social commerce environments.

For retail media marketers, integrating social commerce into their broader omnichannel strategy is no longer optional—it’s becoming essential for comprehensive customer engagement. By expanding beyond traditional retail media placements to include social discovery and conversion touchpoints, brands can create more complete and effective commerce experiences.

Connect with Customers and Drive Conversions with Skai

Skai’s comprehensive omnichannel capabilities empower brands to capitalize on evolving social commerce opportunities through our Retail Media and Paid Search solutions. Our unified approach connects walled garden media, eliminating the fragmentation that typically hinders omnichannel commerce execution.

With Skai’s Retail Media solution, marketers can manage campaigns across 70+ retailers while gaining competitive insights to dominate the digital shelf. Our Paid Search solution provides industry-leading capabilities for creating, optimizing, and measuring social campaigns across all major platforms. Both solutions leverage AI-powered optimization to allocate budget where it delivers maximum impact.

Connect with our team today to discover how Skai can transform your commerce strategy and drive measurable business outcomes across the channels that matter most.