This article is for you if you:
- Use social media for advertising, but don't yet think of them as sales channels in themselves
- Have heard about social commerce but are unsure what it specifically entails for your Shopify webshop
- Want to understand the difference between social commerce and traditional advertising on Meta and TikTok
- Are considering whether it's time to get started, or if it can wait
Traditional e-commerce starts with intent. The customer knows what she's looking for, searches on Google, compares products, and buys. The customer journey is linear and starts with the customer.
Social commerce starts with discovery. The customer scrolls through their feed, encounters a video with a product they didn't know existed, and can, at best, buy it with a few clicks – without leaving the platform. The customer journey starts with the content.
That is the fundamental difference – and it changes everything about how you think about product presentation, content, and conversion.
Social commerce is not the same as running Meta ads that send people to your webshop. It's a broader category that includes:
- Shoppable content: Products tagged directly in videos, Reels, Stories, and organic posts, allowing viewers to click and buy without leaving the app
- Live shopping: Brands and creators sell live via streaming with real-time demonstrations, Q&A, and exclusive offers – conversion rates of 10-18% compared to 2-3% for traditional e-commerce
- Creator affiliate commerce: Creators promote products in their content and earn commission on sales – a performance-based model without a fixed budget
- Social storefronts: Dedicated store pages directly on the platform – Instagram Shop, Facebook Shops, TikTok Shop – functioning as product catalogs
All of this is social commerce. It's not just TikTok Shop. It's the overall movement towards social platforms becoming primary places for product discovery and increasingly for the purchase itself.
Social commerce is not a niche trend. It's a structural shift in where and how consumers discover and buy products.
Globally, the social commerce market reached $945.9 billion in 2023. The growth rate is approximately 30% per year. By 2033, the market is expected to exceed $13 trillion – which is larger than the entire global e-commerce market was just a few years ago.
For the Danish market, three figures are particularly relevant:
- Denmark has approximately 1.2 million TikTok users and an overall social media adoption rate of about 90% of the population.
- In Q3 2025, mobile commerce surpassed desktop commerce for the first time in Denmark – according to DI's e-commerce tracker – driven primarily by social media and digital shopping apps.
- 68% of Gen Z search for products on social media rather than Google, and 22% complete the purchase directly from there.
The demographic reality is clear: the consumers who, in 5-10 years, will constitute the primary purchasing power generation, already discover products primarily via social platforms. Brands that are not present with content and shoppable products are not present in that discovery process.
The global BFCM 2025 provided an additional data point: TikTok Shop generated over $500 million in sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone – with 760,000 livestream sessions attracting 1.6 billion views.
Social commerce is not one thing. The platforms have fundamentally different logic, and it requires a platform-specific approach to benefit from them.
TikTok - the discovery engine
TikTok is the platform that redefined social commerce in the West. Its algorithmic feed exposes content to users based on engagement – not on who they follow. This means that a product can go viral for a brand with zero followers if the content hits the mark.
TikTok Shop is TikTok's integrated e-commerce platform – live in 10 European markets as of June 2026, with Denmark expected to follow in 2026-2027. But TikTok as a social commerce channel is broader than TikTok Shop: the creator-affiliate model, shoppable videos, and LIVE shopping are available to brands advertising on the platform, regardless of whether TikTok Shop has launched in your market.
TikTok is strongest for categories with visual demonstration value and impulse prices under DKK 500: beauty, fashion, supplements, gadgets, and home goods.
Meta (Instagram and Facebook) - the social foundation
Instagram is still the most important social commerce platform for brand positioning and product inspiration. Instagram Shopping allows brands to tag products directly in posts, Stories, and Reels. Meta removed in-app checkout for most European brands in August 2025 – meaning purchases now happen on your webshop rather than directly in the app – but the discovery journey and visual inspiration continue on Instagram.
Facebook Shops is more relevant for an older demographic and for brands with broad catalog coverage. The advantage is integration with Meta's advertising infrastructure: you can retarget users who have visited your Facebook Shop with precise product ads.
For Danish brands with high ambitions, Instagram is generally the most important Meta social commerce channel – strongest within fashion, lifestyle, home, and beauty.
Pinterest - the overlooked visual search engine
Pinterest is not a social media platform in the traditional sense – it's a visual search engine. Users actively search for inspiration for projects, home decor, fashion, and recipes. Product Pins allow brands to link product data directly to visual inspiration images.
For categories like home, interior, weddings, DIY, and fashion, Pinterest's organic content performs significantly better than on other platforms because users are in an active research mode – they are closer to a purchase than users who passively scroll.
YouTube - the long demonstration
YouTube is the social commerce channel for brands with products that require explanation. Unboxings, tutorials, reviews, and comparison video formats are a strong format for everything from electronics and kitchenware to skincare and fitness equipment. Shoppable links directly in videos and YouTube Shopping allow viewers to purchase while they watch.
YouTube is not the platform for impulse purchases. It works best as a supporting channel for brands with a more complex product category that benefits from in-depth demonstrations.
Social commerce doesn't replace your webshop. It complements it.
For most Danish brands, the customer journey in 2026 will look like this: a potential customer discovers your product via a creator's TikTok video. She sees more content on your Instagram, clicks through to your product page on your Shopify webshop, and buys there. Touchpoints start on social platforms, conversion happens on your website.
This means that social commerce success isn't just measured by direct sales via the platforms. It's measured by whether your social content universe generates enough discovery and interest to drive traffic that converts on your webshop. Post-purchase surveys - "How did you hear about us?" - are an important supplement to technical attribution here, because social platforms are notoriously difficult to measure accurately in last-click models.
Brands that win in social commerce are those with a cohesive presence: their Shopify webshop, their Instagram, their TikTok profile, and their creator network work as one system - not as isolated channels.
DVISIONMEDIA is a Meta Badged Partner at the highest level and a TikTok Platinum Partner - one of very few Danish agencies with both partner statuses and an official TikTok Case Study published globally. We have managed 202+ million DKK in ad spend and helped 1,053+ e-commerce businesses since 2020.
In practice, this means we view social commerce as an integrated part of a brand's overall e-commerce system - not as an isolated channel tested separately. Paid advertising on Meta and TikTok, organic content strategy, creator agreements, and shoppable product integration are all parts of the same setup. And cross-touchpoint attribution - via Triple Whale as a Gold Partner - ensures you measure the right things and allocate budget based on what truly drives your growth.
Social commerce isn't difficult to get started with. It's difficult to do right across platforms, with the right creator relationships, the right content format, and the right attribution setup behind it. That's exactly where we can help.
1. What is social commerce?
Social commerce is the integration of e-commerce functionality directly into social media platforms, allowing consumers to discover and purchase products without leaving the app. This includes shoppable posts, live shopping, creator-affiliate sales, and social storefronts like Instagram Shop and TikTok Shop. Unlike traditional e-commerce, social commerce doesn't start with a search – it begins with discovery through content and algorithms.
2. What is the difference between social commerce and social advertising?
Social advertising is paid distribution: you buy reach and send users to your webshop. Social commerce is a sales channel in itself: your content, creator partnerships, and shoppable products are the sales engine. The two can and should be combined, but they require fundamentally different strategies, resources, and KPIs.
3. Which platform is best for social commerce?
It depends on your target audience and product category. TikTok is strongest for discovery-driven impulse purchases in categories like beauty, fashion, and gadgets – especially among 18-34 year olds. Instagram is strong for brand positioning and lifestyle products across all age groups. Pinterest is effective for research-driven discovery in home, fashion, and DIY. YouTube is best suited for products that require demonstration and explanation.
4. Does social commerce work for B2B or only B2C?
Social commerce is primarily a B2C channel. B2B sales rarely occur via shoppable posts or live shopping – the complex decision-making process and long sales cycles are ill-suited to the platforms' impulse-driven logic. B2B brands can leverage social media for brand awareness and lead generation, but the commerce element itself is almost exclusively relevant for consumer brands.
