By Gary J. Nix
- Instagram’s Shopping feature has brands paying attention to cultural data
- Experts predict that Facebook will depend on Instagram for ad revenue growth
The nexus of technology, media and culture has quickly become the holy grail for businesses looking to maximize their revenue. One way companies are looking to take advantage of this is by leveraging Instagram’s Shopping feature. These brands are paying attention to cultural data more than ever, while betting on the social media giant’s design that helps connect users to their businesses. In turn, the Facebook (FB -1.27%) subsidiary hopes this will increase the $9 billion in ad revenue growth Instagram collected in 2018.
Why This Matters: Technological advances afforded by advertising on social media platforms like Instagram, have proven the ad industry’s penchant for presenting audience targeting as the singular, modern-day selling solution to not be wholly true. Constant examples of communities mobilizing to positively or negatively influence any company’s sales have exposed the fact that finding the right cultural connections between brand and consumer mean more to sales than they ever realized.
Finding the right cultural connections between brand and consumer mean more to sales than they ever realized
An example of this is Strong Black Lead. Netflix (NFLX -3.36%) saw the business value of forming a strong connection with the Black community so they found and created points of shared cultural connection to get in good with a community with a buying power of $1.3 trillion. Cultural connections and cultural intelligence have now become business imperatives over the act of trying to leverage culture only.
Situational Awareness: Businesses are learning that being social on social media platforms holds more revenue-generating power when done correctly. The most successful businesses will focus on identifying the right balance of quantitative and qualitative data that will produce insights that will lead to better connectivity between brand and consumer.
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