TiVo, Amazon Team to Bring Shopping to Livingroom Couch

TiVo, which was once the innovator in taking the commercials out of TV viewing, is now working its hardest to put those commercials back in, with the help of Amazon.com. The New York Times is reporting TiVo is partnering with Amazon.com to enable a "product purchase" feature on TiVo menus and shows featuring product placement.

As an example of how the product purchase feature works, if a guest on "The Daily Show" has a new book, an alert will show up on screen allowing you to press a button to buy the book through Amazon right then and there. This introduces the problem of taking people out of the show to buy the product, but TiVo will also allow you to just add the product to your Amazon account's shopping cart to be bought later. Or if you do take the time to buy the product, then TiVo will of course tape the rest of the show for you.

At first, only a select few shows will have this feature integrated, but TiVo is hoping to get more advertisers on board to extend to any show with product placement, and not just talk shows. The problem for advertisers is that TiVo users make up a relatively small demographic, so there isn't a strong push for most advertisers to implement the "product purchase" feature in shows. What TiVo is counting on is that it will create a solid business model and then sell its software to other DVR companies and making the "product purchase" feature a DVR standard.

Amazon.com and TiVo have been getting very close lately, with this partnership coming close on the heels of TiVo allowing you to play movies bought through Amazon Video on Demand. It makes me wonder what other deals TiVo and Amazon.com might have brewing, because good things always come in groups of three.

Comments

Post a comment Post a comment

0 / 1000 max characters