[mdonahoe]

I've been waiting for this for 3 years.

After using Instagram a bunch, I found the targeted ads got pretty good: most were for things I was interested in, such as tech gadgets or crafts for my kids. However, clicking on an ad and buying something was so much higher friction than the rest of the mobile Instagram experience that I often just gave up.

Since then, I assumed FB must be working on some sort of payment service in order to complete the loop on the ad->purchase funnel.

[artdigital]

Anecdotally, most of the ads for stuff I see on Instagram are scam. The products are real but the websites they were sold on just copied the images. Saw the pattern over and over again and once got burnt for trying to buy something that looked ok. (Thank god PayPal got me my money back eventually)

I don’t trust things I see in Instagram ads anymore, even if the product looks interesting

[dan-robertson]

A big reason for fb to care is that it makes it easier to attribute the purchase to the add (so they can claim they should get paid more by the advertiser), which can be particularly useful to them on iOS where they can have problems tracking people from one app (where they see the ad) to an app where they pay for the thing.

[elwell]

> friction

It would be cool to be able to impulse donate as easily as you can click "Like" when you see some ad for some cause you care about.

[varispeed]

Pretty much any gadget I found interesting turned out to be sold for 5-20x price of what you could easily find on Aliexpress.

[lma21]

It's also because most ship from aliexpress directly to your address. We stopped noticing that all of the mundane gadgets out there cost in the range of 12.99 to 19.99, whereas you buy 50 for 200 on Aliexpress

[Yhippa]

> After using Instagram a bunch, I found the targeted ads got pretty good

I really hate admitting this, but it's been very true for me. I've come across some legitimately helpful stuff that I would never have sought out.

[can16358p]

This.

I've actually bought a lot of stuff from IG ads (and there's no other platform that I've ever clicked an ad let alone buying), but I agree with the purchase (which is off-IG anyway) to be of more friction. This can solve this problem by integrating payment into IG.