The Real Numbers Behind Social Commerce in Australia

There is no shortage of headlines about social commerce. Most of them are imported from US or China data and do not survive contact with the Australian Gen Z market. We pulled our last twelve months of campaign data across more than 30 brands to understand what is actually shifting product locally.

First finding, in-platform checkout is overrated. Less than 10 percent of Gen Z purchases we tracked in 2026 were completed without leaving the social platform. The discovery happens in the feed, the consideration happens in the comments, but the buy still happens on the brand site or app. The brands betting on Instagram or TikTok native checkout as the primary commerce surface are missing where the money lands.

Second finding, the comments section is the new product page. Gen Z reads the top comments before clicking through, and what they read there has a measurable effect on conversion. We see a 15 to 25 percent lift in click-to-purchase when the top three comments are positive, specific, and ideally not from the brand itself. Investing in community management is now a direct conversion lever, not a brand metric.

Third finding, the saved post is the new wishlist. Gen Z saves what they intend to buy, often days or weeks before the purchase. Brands that retarget on save behaviour see significantly stronger ROAS than brands that retarget on click alone. Most ad accounts are not configured to capture this signal yet.

Practical takeaway, treat the social ad as the start of a journey, not the journey itself. Optimise for the click that leads to a save, then retarget the save. That is the path our highest performing accounts run.