Dive Brief:

• Mobile shopping platform Spring has partnered with the hit mobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Digiday reports.

• Starting Monday, game players can dress their avatars with 12 brands available through Spring, and can download the app to shop the items as well.

• Designers Karl Lagerfeld and Olivier Rousteing have also promoted apparel through the Kardashian game, but Spring is the first to promote sales of several brands at once, according to Digiday.

Dive Insight:

While Instagram has been working on shoppability, its buy button—like buy buttons on social media in general—has failed to really catch on. Similarly, retailers are having some difficulty getting much traction with their own mobile apps, in part because users don’t seem to want too many apps loaded on their phones.

Spring, which launched in 2014 and has attracted some $36 million in venture capital investment, resembles Instagram or Pinterest in appearance but allows users to buy with just a swipe in the app. The app also provides product information in the postings, including sizes and prices, and allows brands to choose how often they post and the specific items that are shown in the app.

The answer to more widespread and successful shoppable marketing could be found on apps like Spring, which features several brands at once (Spring CEO Alan Tisch told Digiday there are 1,000 or so on Spring) and could become a go-to place for mobile shoppers. It depends on how many people will end up trying Spring and rivals.

The company's incursion into the Kardashian game could go far, especially given the game's immense popularity. According to Kim Kardashian: Hollywood's developer, Glu Mobile, the game was installed 22,857,239 times between its June release and November last year, with users spending a total of 5.7 billion minutes on the game during that time.