Meta is leaning harder into livestream shopping, putting its live-video shopping ads on Instagram and rolling them out worldwide on Facebook. New Facebook tools let viewers shop promoted items mid-broadcast without leaving the stream, powered by live-shopping platforms like CommentSold, Firework, and TalkShopLive.
Meta also introduced virtual cards for shoppers, which are temporary numbers tied to the Mastercard or Visa they already have, so they never hand a merchant their real card details. (Meta’s like, “We know we have scams on our platform, so here’s a virtual card so that you only get ripped off by this one purchase instead of having your credit limit maxed out.”)
On the creator side, Meta is expanding its affiliate partner program, allowing creators to earn commissions by tagging products from India’s Flipkart, Latin America’s Mercado Libre, and soon Lazada across Asia.
Lastly, the company is automating product ad creation. Advertisers can simply supply raw product data and creative assets, and Meta’s AI system builds a tailored ad format for each individual viewer on the fly.
Remember in 2022 when Facebook quit livestream shopping and Instagram shut down its affiliate program? Lock in for a second because I’m about to dump hard on Meta…
It’s amazing to me that Meta is as successful as it is because it’s got to be the most poorly run Big Tech company I’ve ever seen, with absolutely no long term vision. Meta’s entire empire has been built by acquiring, copying, or stealing. The company isn’t intrinsically cool or culturally relevant — it simply buys both. Nothing demonstrates this more than Meta’s on-again off-again relationship with commerce.
- 2015 – Facebook began testing “Buy” buttons and early Shop sections on Pages, its first real push into on-platform commerce.
- 2016 – Facebook Marketplace launched, which is about the only thing they ever got right with commerce. Of course, they took the idea from Craigslist.
- 2017 – Instagram introduced shoppable post tags, letting brands tag products in posts.
- 2018 – Facebook debuted Live Shopping, its first livestream-commerce feature.
- 2019 – Instagram launched Checkout, enabling native in-app purchases without leaving the app.
- 2020 – Meta launched Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops, built via partnerships with Shopify and BigCommerce. Later that year, they aggressively forced adoption by replacing Instagram’s notification tab with a home-screen Shop Tab, and expanded Live Shopping to all U.S. sellers.
- 2021 – Meta partnered with Shopify so merchants could sync catalogs into Shops, and Instagram began testing affiliate commerce. Later that year, they added Live Shopping Events and “Drops” for product launches.
- 2022 – Instagram shut down its affiliate-commerce program. Facebook shut down Live Shopping.
- 2023 – Instagram ended Live Shopping entirely to wrap up Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency.” Meta dropped the Facebook Shop tab, sunset standalone Shops in most non-U.S. global markets, and formed a surprise alliance with Amazon allowing users to link accounts and buy directly from Amazon feed ads.
- 2024 – Meta implemented a strict “Native Checkout or Die” mandate for U.S. merchants, forcing them to process payments on-platform or lose their shop and product tagging features. Meanwhile, they leaned hard into AI-driven shopping ads like Advantage+ while TikTok Shop surged.
- 2025 – The native checkout strategy completely failed due to merchant backlash and operational complexity of running checkout. (Sound familiar? *cough* OpenAI…) In a massive U-turn, Meta deprecated native in-app checkout and forced everyone back to an external-link model, transforming Shops back into visual discovery galleries that route the transaction back to the merchant’s own website.
- 2026 – Meta re-enters commerce discovery via “AI Mode” search, scraping deep product catalog feeds to answer conversational buyer queries directly in chat. They also resurrect livestream shopping by partnering with third-party software (like CommentSold and TalkShopLive) to power “Live Video Shopping Ads” and comment-to-buy DMs, leaving the transaction logistics to external providers.
It’s no wonder none of Meta’s commerce efforts ever took off! They didn’t give brands, merchants, and consumers time to adapt.
Imagine where Meta would be with e-commerce, livestream shopping, and affiliate commerce if they had stuck with it for the past decade. If they had created the future of social commerce, instead of copying it.
