A shoppable ad lets the viewer look at products, choose among them and go straight to buying, without first landing on a homepage and starting the search again. The term started on social platforms — tagged products in posts, shoppable video with a product strip underneath — and it now covers any ad whose interaction is shopping itself: browsing, choosing, building a basket, comparing.
For retail and e-commerce apps, the interactive version of this is one of the most natural uses of the playable format. Shopping is already interactive — swipe, tap, compare, add — so an ad that lets the viewer do a few seconds of it is an honest preview of the app, in the same way a game playable is an honest preview of a game.
Why interaction suits shopping
- Choice creates intent. A viewer who picked a product in the ad has told you, and themselves, what they want. The click that follows starts from a decision rather than from curiosity.
- Range is hard to show in a video. Fifteen seconds of footage shows a few products. A swipe deck or a grid shows as many as the viewer wants to see.
- The app experience is the pitch. For a shopping app, the argument is how easy and pleasant it is to shop there. Letting the viewer try it makes that argument directly.
- Personal results travel. The item chosen in the ad can open on the product page, so the ad does the first step of the journey rather than repeating it.
Formats that work for retail
Swipe to pick
A deck of products or looks; swipe to skip, tap to choose. Fast, familiar and good at showing range. The last card shown is the viewer's pick, and the call to action opens it. It suits fashion, travel, homeware and anything browsed by taste.
Build the basket
Drag products into a basket against a budget or a recipe, watch the total and the savings add up. It sells a grocery or delivery app's core promise — value and convenience — by letting the viewer feel it. Fill your basket is a working example.
Configure it
Change colour, material, size or options and see the product update. The strongest format for products bought on customisation — furniture, trainers, cars, electronics. See product configurator ads and the Atelier chair.
Find your match
Two or three questions that end on a named product — the right shade, the right size, the right plan. Ideal when choosing is the hard part. See quiz ads.
Unbox or reveal
Open the box, tear the wrapper, lift the lid on a new product. It carries the excitement of receiving an order into the ad, which suits electronics, beauty and subscription boxes. Unbox it shows the pattern.
Scratch to save
Scratch a card to reveal a real discount for the app. Very effective for promotions — and only for real ones. The reward must exist, the terms must be clear, and the odds, if any, must be honest. See scratch card ads and scratch and save.
Land the click on the chosen product
The biggest waste in retail advertising is an ad that sells one product and a click that lands on a homepage. An interactive ad knows what the viewer chose, so the click should open it.
- For a website: add the product or choice to the landing URL as parameters, so the page opens on the product or a pre-filtered listing.
- For an app: the store link cannot carry the choice, so it travels on a measurement partner's tracking link, which delivers it to the app on first open through deferred deep linking. See deep linking in playables.
- For a store page: point different creatives at matching custom product pages or custom store listings. See custom product pages.
Designing for a shopper, not a gamer
Retail viewers did not come to play, and the interaction should feel like shopping rather than like a game with products in it. That changes a few rules taken from game playables.
- Product first. The product imagery is the most important asset in the file, so give it the pixels — large, sharp, on a clean background — and compress everything else harder.
- No fail state. A game can let the viewer lose; a shopping ad never should. Every path ends on a product the viewer can buy.
- Fewer, bigger choices. Three to six products per screen, each a generous tap target. A catalogue belongs on the landing page, not in the ad.
- Real names and real products. A shopper who taps a product expects to find that exact item after the click. Generic placeholders break the promise the ad just made.
- Brand voice over arcade energy. Motion and sound should match the store's own tone — a luxury brand's reveal is slow and quiet, a discount app's can be loud.
Retail is also where orientation matters most. Shopping apps are used in portrait, but ads for them appear inside landscape games too, so lay the product grid out for both — a column of cards in portrait, a row in landscape — rather than letterboxing one design.
Keeping it accurate
Retail creative carries a risk game creative does not: stated prices and offers. A playable is a built file that cannot fetch data, so a price inside it is correct on the day it was built and on no other day guaranteed.
- Rebuild when prices change, or show only claims that stay true for the campaign's life — a percentage off during fixed dates, a free-delivery threshold.
- State the terms of any discount in the ad, briefly and legibly.
- Show products that are actually stocked, in the markets where the ad runs.
- Keep countdowns true: a deadline must be the real deadline. See countdown timers.
Measuring a shoppable ad
Measure the funnel from the ad into the shop: interaction and completion inside the ad, click-through, then product views, add-to-basket and purchase on the landing page or in the app. The choice distribution inside the ad — which products viewers picked — is merchandising data in its own right, and often surprising.
Web or app destination
Retailers often want both: installs for the app and sales on the website. The same interactive creative can serve either, with a different click-through. In-app networks send the click to a store by default; a web destination opens the retailer's own product page, with the viewer's choice in its parameters.
Building shoppable playables
Playable Ads Maker includes Interactive Modules built for retail mechanics — swipe picker, configurator, quiz finder, basket and scratch formats — each re-skinned with your own products and exported like any other playable. The Web destination builds a single-file ad whose call to action opens your link, carrying the viewer's choices, and deep link parameters do the same for apps through your measurement partner.
Create playable end cards in minutes—no code required.
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