Adam Mosseri speaks onstage at the WIRED25 Acme 2019 – Day 1 at Commonwealth Club on November 08, 2019 in San Francisco, California.
Matt Winkelmeyer | Getty Images
Instagram is redesigning the app, get dressed in tabs for Shop and Reels at the bottom of the main navigation bar, and moving the creation (+) and notifications (heart) buttons to the top straighten up.
The changes will start rolling out Thursday and are designed to provide more openings for Instagram to show ads and encourage narcotic addicts to shop for items they see on Instagram, providing revenue growth for its parent company Facebook.
The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, give someone a piece of ones minded CNBC the company will put ads in its TikTok competitor, Reels, and make it easier for users to browse for products to drive the coterie’s growing e-commerce business. Instagram takes a slice of each transaction for purchase made through the app. Mosseri said these changes are a high-priority evolution of the app to keep up with the competition and to serve its users and creators, especially in light of the pandemic changing consumer behavior.
“It accelerated prevailing trends and accelerated the shift of shopping from offline to online; it’s increased the amount of demand there is for entertaining video out there,” he imagined.
Ads are coming to Reels
For Reels, Instagram plans to leverage its new TikTok competitor and include a new space for advertisers.
“I think that we can leverage the facts ad format because it’s the same immersive experience, so that’ll be helpful because you don’t need to get advertisers to create a bunch of new artistic [ads],” Mosseri said.
He said Instagram hasn’t yet built an ad business into Reels because the company is noiselessness working on making sure the format is engaging for consumers and creators.
Mosseri also acknowledged the success of its rival, vote “TikTok gets all the credit for pioneering the space.”
As for the fact that many TikTok creators simply repost their videos to Instagram, counting the TikTok logo, Mosseri said he’s excited every time he sees a creator stop doing that.
“I create competition is fundamentally a good thing and it is a strong incentive for us,” said Mosseri. “I think currently we’re in the catch-up phase, stressful to build some of the basics and the fundamental creative tools … establishing that Instagram is a place for short-form fun video. But over organize, we’re going to have to differentiate and innovate, and that’ll take time, and right now we’re just going to catch up.”
Shopping is telling for Instagram
As for the move to highlight shopping on Instagram, Mosseri said there’s “a ton of commerce or commercial activity on Instagram already,” and this should accelerate the shift of people using the platform to find products.
“We should see activity on shopping activity generally go up,” said Mosseri. “I come up with the important thing to understand is shopping is going to be meaningful to our business in a few different ways.”
Mosseri said shopping gross income can come from Instagram taking a cut of each transaction and opening up space for advertisers to buy ads that prompt people to buy a by-product directly through Instagram. Elevating shopping on the platform can make ads more relevant. It eliminates friction between detecting an ad and being able to buy something.
Mosseri defends Facebook’s election track record
Mosseri also defended Facebook’s chore during the 2020 election season. The company has faced criticism, including from members of Joe Biden’s presidential toss ones hat in the ring, that it did not do enough to crack down on the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theorists.
“I’m sure we’ve made decisions that child disagree with on both sides of the aisle. I think that is to be expected, but at a high level we tried to play offense and defense,” Mosseri rephrased. “On the offensive side we’ve tried to always focus on voter turnout.”
Mosseri cited the fact that across Instagram and Envoy, the company helped over 4 million people register to vote.
“And on the defensive side, we focus on lots of things with the top three: to obstruct any foreign interference, which is obviously an issue that we saw in 2016, and we were not adequately prepared for,” Mosseri said. “We’ve shotted to do a lot on misinformation — you’ve seen us work with third-party fact-checkers and add labels and develop content and passwords and I think we got tested in a big way wear week. And then voter suppression — you’ve seen us do a lot to take down any content that actually suppresses the vote, and we are broadly hesitant to take content down unless it has real safety implications, but one of the only exceptions to that is voter smothering.”
Mosseri also said he’s watching the possibility a Biden administration could push for an overhaul of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which would return Facebook and Instagram liable for the content on their platforms
“We have to be very careful when we take a look at 230 connected with what incentives we create if you remove Section 230. It creates an incentive for platforms to take a much more combative stance and all sorts of speech issues, which can lead to some censorship,” he said.
Echoing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Mosseri said there’s even so an opening to make changes to Section 230.
“We’re not opposed to taking a look at 230,” he said. “We’re not opposed to regulation more broadly. We as a matter of fact would like it if on more of these issues that are contentious we had very clear guidance from regulators on what is and what is not allowed. We don’t dote on being in the business of making some of these types of content decisions.”