Product tagging

Instagram’s shopping posts let viewers tap to reveal product tags within the content.4 Instagram’s April 2022 announcement explained that tapping a published Feed tag opens a product detail page, from which a viewer could purchase in the app or through the brand’s product page.2 Instagram also documented product tags on every product featured by its @shop account, connecting its coverage of small businesses to shopping.5 Meta’s Newsroom described another route: ads with product tags that let businesses send people directly from an ad to their Shop.6

Meta’s patents on product tagging describe proposed shopping-link and product-matching designs, rather than confirming how Instagram’s current features work.7891011 In Meta’s image-linking patents, information supplied by users or brand representatives can associate an item in a particular part of an image with a product and an online storefront where it can be purchased.710 Meta’s patented designs can vary visible shopping cues or purchase links according to a viewer’s demographics.710 Meta’s patented approach also describes placing a tagged image in a feed devoted to a particular product and presenting it to someone interested in that product.11

Meta’s product-matching patents describe catalogs—lists of products and their details—for identifying items in user-created content.89 These Meta patents describe building catalogs from merchant submissions, user tags, comments or analysis of posts, with information such as price, size, colors, shipping and availability.89 Meta’s patented approaches would recommend other posts featuring that product according to how well they match the viewer.89 The same Meta patents describe giving creators insights into products predicted to engage viewers.89