Gone are the days of shopping malls and call-to-order catalogs. It’s 2019 — we buy things on our phones now. Mobile shopping continues to grow in popularity, and media platforms are keeping up with modern shoppers through new product features and advertising options. Brands that embrace a mobile-first mentality and take advantage of new mobile commerce tools will be better equipped to provide the experiences their modern shoppers expect. Social shopping is easier than ever. Instagram started out as a platform for sharing photos with friends, but has evolved into a destination for online shopping. Currently, Instagram’s commerce functionality ends when it directs users to a brand’s website to complete a purchase. This is all about to change, however. Through Instagram’s new checkout feature, currently in beta testing, users will be able to make purchases inside the app, from start to finish. The rollout of the checkout feature will be slow — only a handful of prominent retailers currently have access to it — but this change will have major implications to many digital marketers. The new checkout feature will remove almost every barrier to entry between an Instagram ad and a purchase, leading to more accurate and simpler ROI measurement on the ad platform. Google now supports shoppable images. Mobile shopping is also continuing to increase the value of digital advertising. Like Instagram, Google is adding new features to its shopping ad offerings that focus on mobile users. Shopping ads are already prominent on Google’s platform, appearing in web search and on various results pages. More recently, users can now see these ads in image search, and advertisers will be able to tag multiple products in a single ad. Since 50% of online shoppers have thought about buying an item after seeing a picture of it, advertisers will benefit from presenting users with multiple images in one ad. By allowing advertisers to promote their products in image searches, Google presents yet another opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audiences during the consumer journey. The potential success of these extensions is unclear due to their newness, but marketers should be prepared for more of these ad extensions to become available as mobile shopping grows. Are you ready for the mobile future? By 2021, more than half of all ecommerce sales will come from mobile purchases. Whether or not you work in advertising, you should get ready for a mobile-first world. In the mobile-first future, it will be even more essential for websites to be optimized for mobile through site speed, images, keywords, and UX. Is your site prepared for this mobile-first mentality? To find out, check out our SEO Starter Kit. We’ve brought together everything you need to start planning for the mobile-first future. If brands understand mobile advertising platforms like Facebook and Google, and prepare their own websites accordingly, they’re sure to see success as shopping with your thumbs continues to be a thing.