QVC. HSN. Infomercials. Direct response TV.
“The idea of television commerce is not new,” says Peter Hamilton, head of TV commerce at Roku, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
But the opportunity today is different. There’s Shopify, BigCommerce, and there are APIs available to take care of everything from uploading product catalogs to creating online checkout experiences.
“All of these things are now much more available and scalable,” Hamilton says. “There’s just so much technology that has simplified the funnel and made it easier to connect to commerce – and we’re still even in the early innings here.”
But Roku is doing a lot of experimentation.
In June, for example, Roku announced a partnership with Walmart to enable people to make a purchase directly from the retailer via streaming TV ads using their Roku remote control. The pilot tests are happening now.
Although broadcasters and brands have begun incorporating QR codes into TV ads to make them shoppable (or at least create a landing page), Roku is more bullish on the TV remote control as a mechanism for shoppability in streaming television.
That’s not a surprising POV for Roku. Every Roku player comes with its own remote. But Roku has done research into behavior patterns and found that TV viewers are multiple times more likely to click “OK” on a remote than to scan a QR code off a TV screen when given the choice.
“When you’re trying to drive pure performance,” Hamilton says, “the remote is still kind of the king.”
Also in this episode: An update on Roku’s recently launched clean room, Hamilton’s take on mobile consolidation from his purview as the former CEO of app attribution company TUNE and why he and his wife, Jennifer Wong, opened an NFT museum in Seattle last year.
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