With the era of t-commerce on the verge, as Amazon names it, the platform is planning to provide provisions of buying goods directly from their TV screens while watching programs. Studios Chief Operating Officer Albert Cheng said that after a long period of development, it seems consumers are ready to try out t-Commerce. Speaking on a panel, Cheng noted that Amazon has long sought to “uplift the reach of Prime Video and integrate that with commerce.” Their objective is to connect the Amazon Video system to the Amazon commerce ecosystem, being made possible by its thriving line of devices and delivered by its expanding voice ecosystem.
T–Commerce is a term describing trade via a (smart) digital TV-set which – besides its main functionality – acts as a marketing channel enabling two-directional communication, interactive advertising, and addressable advertising. The promise of T-commerce is to enhance shopping channels as well as regular TV ads by offering consumers a “One-Click” “Buy It” possibility.
A full-fledged collaboration between viewing and purchasing items on-screen is still in its very initial days, however, the early testings have proved to be successful. Those experiments have included programming like the live shoppable stream of Rihanna’s fashion brand Savage X Fenty, as well as Making the Cut, the reality series co-hosted by Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum, which allowed viewers to buy designs by the winning contestants. Although the platform did not give any further details on the subject, just that the effort was an outstanding success.
Amazon has the vision to build off its present success to capture the t-commerce opportunity from end-to-end. The potential for the channel has long been known, but actually fulfilling the orders has presented a staggering logistical complication.
“Like, okay, you can create these apps and figure out how to tie the content with the opportunity to purchase, but then you had to figure out how to deliver it,” said Cheng. “In order to scale that across the industry, it’s extraordinarily difficult.” “We have this massive, global infrastructure and delivery system, and the ability to tie television and buying all on the same platform,” he further added.
The platform is still experimenting to see what specific shows and content formats are best suited to t-commerce. Thus far, the developments are U.S.-focused, as foreign markets present a host of additional regulatory issues.
Although t-commerce is different than other types of event-based marketing pushes, it’s also similar in that it creates an experience and then ties the commerce opportunity around it like a helpful little bow. A bow, Cheng noted in his public remarks, that could put Amazon in a competitive category of its own.
“When it comes to competitiveness, it’s hard to put us in any specific category,” Cheng said. “We play in so many different fields and products and services that at the end of the day, we’re very much in a relationship business with our customers. We can be an SVOD product, we can be a delivery service, we can be music.”