We are seeing a drastic shift in consumer behaviour and expectations. Accelerated e-commerce adoption during the pandemic introduced consumers to new ways of interacting with brands. Shopping is no longer a functional task; it’s now a personalised and engaging experience, with people looking to be inspired.

While search engines and e-commerce sites are great at meeting customer demand for a product, they’re not effective at generating it. That’s the superpower of our platform.  

At Meta, we’ve spent more than a decade building a powerful discovery engine that anticipates customer needs, drives product discovery and creates demand. Our Discovery Commerce system introduces consumers to products that align with their tastes, which they might never have come across otherwise. These moments of discovery are happening at scale across our platforms. Results from a 2020 GFK survey showed more than 74% of people said they use Meta platforms to discover brands or products online. 

Today, we hosted our inaugural Meta Commerce Day in EMEA, a virtual event to help businesses fully realise the opportunities of this social commerce landscape. A recent Accenture study found that the social commerce space will grow to be worth $1.2 trillion by 2025, expanding at a rate three times faster than that of e-commerce. 

The Social Commerce Opportunity

Laurent Solly, Meta’s VP Southern Europe, outlines the potential of social commerce to drive business growth. He also highlights how we’re fuelling our discovery engine, from privacy-enhancing technologies and an AI-driven supercomputer, to commerce ad solutions like dynamic ads, collaborative ads, ads with product tags and our new Advantage automated product. These ad solutions enable millions of businesses to generate demand today. 

The Next Era of Commerce

Nicola Mendelsohn, VP Global Business Group at Meta, discusses how we’re building for the future of commerce and the ways in which the metaverse will unlock new opportunities for businesses and consumers to connect.

Three Steps to the Future

Benedict Evans has spent 20 years analysing mobile, media and technology, and worked in equity research, strategy, consulting and venture capital. He is now an independent analyst. Benedict explores the most exciting macro and strategic trends in technology today.