The 'Add to Cart' button will come to TV remotes. Many have tried. All have failed. Why now?

摘要

The popularity of home shopping channels has shown that consumers will shop through television, especially if the items are easy to purchase. What if consumers could, while watching a program, buy that stylish black handbag like the one sported by their favorite TV character simply by pressing or saying “add to cart” on a remote? This service has been predicted for years, dating back to the 1980s. At various points, it’s been called Enhanced TV, T-Commerce, or Shopification. But all these past attempts at unifying shopping and television have failed due to the difficulty in marking-up content by hand, scene-by-scene and frame-by-frame. Massive advancements in computer vision technology, together with the shift to over-the-top (OTT) television, have finally made this future possible. And not just for only one or two pilot episodes, but for all streamed content. Today’s computer vision algorithms and modern IP platforms can identify shopping items in content automatically and tag huge libraries in minutes. OTT plus computer vision can offer service providers an entirely new way to monetize content - even back-catalog content. This “contextual commerce” combines high purchase intent and personalization in a simple, friction-free transaction environment. By linking these context-aware shopping opportunities to well-established e-commerce platforms, OTTs can generate new revenue by directly facilitating the purchase of that stylish black handbag. In this discussion, we will outline the applications of computer vision in the space and walk through the key challenges and solutions to integrating the technology. Readers will leave with a simple five-step checklist for evaluating and integrating this technology.