Giving television viewers the ability to buy products they see on their screens with a click of a remote control — say the Manolo Blahniks on Carrie Bradshaw’s feet or Ross’s sweater on “Friends” — has been talked about by advertisers for years without much success.

Some viewers of the History Channel will be able to buy items offered during shows. A new service being introduced this week to Verizon FiOS customers, however, will allow viewers to do just that — for items like bicycles, radios and coins — directly from shows on the History Channel, owned by A&E Network. The idea is to put products from brands like Schwinn, Crosley Radio and the Franklin Mint in front of consumers at the moment they see a similar item on shows like “American Pickers” and “Pawn Stars.”

The products will be “contextual to what you are watching on television,” said Rachelle Zoffer, director of content acquisition and programming for FiOS TV at Verizon. “Our goal is to put things on the television that enhance the programming and create value for our subscribers.”

A small icon in the upper right corner of the screen will signal that an item is available, and with the touch of a button on a remote control, the screen will split in two, with items for purchase on the right. After setting up a user account on TVWallet.com, viewers can complete their transaction by entering their phone number and four-digit PIN.

The service will be available to nearly four million Verizon FiOS subscribers primarily in the Northeast, California, Texas and Florida, Ms. Zoffer said. Verizon will promote the service with 30-second spots during History Channel programming. She said the company had plans to include the service in other networks soon.

Mark Garner, senior vice president for distribution at A&E Networks, said the service’s success would be measured by how much consumers use it and whether they buy anything. The History Channel already has “a very healthy commerce engine” on its Web site, Mr. Garner said, and if 5 percent of the people who see the new feature make a purchase, that would be considered an initial success.

Men ages 25 and 54 make up the primary audience of the History Channel, and these men are the ones meant to be served by the new feature. In deciding which shows will add the shopping feature, Mr. Garner said: “We look at it from a network level. Which programs are more likely to have engaged customers?”

Shows on the Lifetime network like “Project Runway,” “Drop Dead Diva” and “Army Wives” may eventually adopt it, Mr. Garner said. The data collected on buyers will help the network decide “how we market, how we program, how we develop our promotions,” he said, adding that there were no plans to share that data with advertisers directly.

The brands in the introduction are optimistic about the exposure, even if results are not immediate.

“When you sell jukeboxes, turntables and old radios, you’ve got to be patient,” said Bo LeMastus, the president of Crosley Radio, whose company has been selling products through the History Channel Web site for more than a month. Mr. LeMastus said the company became interested in doing business with the History Channel after an episode of “American Pickers,” where the show’s stars came across old Crosley radios in a barn.

“This is going to take some time to develop and for the consumer to catch on,” Mr. LeMastus said. “It’s more about the long-term picture.”

It is Schwinn’s first time working with the History Channel. “There are a lot of people who are very nostalgic about Schwinn,” said Lori Peters, the company’s director of consumer activation for North America. “Now they have the opportunity to act very impulsively. Kind of like buying a memory through your TV screen.”

Those memories have the potential to be quite lucrative, according to projections provided by Mike Fitzsimmons, chief executive of Delivery Agent, the company that is providing the technology that powers the transactions.

In trials, Mr. Fitzsimmons said, the value of the average order placed by viewers was $75, which could mean $285 million in revenue in the first year if all FiOS households made one purchase during that time. “It doesn’t take much for this business to end up with too many zeros to count,” he said.

I moderated TVOT’s session on t-commerce where these experts shared their latest t-commerce deployments: Mark Garner, A+E Networks; Rachelle Zoffer, Verizon FIOS TV; Anthony Landamia, SeaChange; and Michael Fitzsimmons, Delivery Agent. Be sure to check out the presentation at the end of the blog which shows all of the campaigns we discussed during the session.
Four Key T-Commerce Learnings

With such a great roster, the session not only packed in the people but also the t-commerce learnings. Here are four that should be at the top of your list:

1. Take the Long View: A+E Network’s Mark Garner noted that developing t-commerce applications requires patience. If you’re looking for a quick hit, look elsewhere. The History Channel shopping widget – developed by A+E Networks, Verizon FIOS TV and Delivery Agent – shows the rewards of taking the long view with its innovative combination of single screen accessibility and dual-screen-like robustness. Ironically, I’m betting that this app (specifically, the template behind it) will help others take the shorter view.

2. Sweat the Backend Deals to Deliver the Customer Deals: Anthony Landamia underscored the intense deal negotiations required to structure SeaChange’s Watch & Buy single-screen app, where customers can purchase a DVD and watch the same movie instantly for free. Tough negotiating is critical to creating offers attractive to customers. With many hands in the t-commerce till, this will continue to be a challenge, particularly for margin-challenged media product. History Channel Shopping Widget from A+E Networks, Verizon FIOS TV and Delivery Agent – T-commerce strategy, interactive television marketing

3. Place Your Bets: New technology is allowing t-commerce companies to experiment with new ways of connecting content with product with customers. Mike Fitzsimmons demonstrated this with a rapid-fire walk through of Delivery Agent’s deployed campaigns, including a Shazam tag app forThe Biggest Loser, commerce integrated into Facebook, shoppable Rovi EPG, and companion sync app for Sons of Anarchy. Clearly, Delivery Agent is placing bets around the table. The potential pay-off? First-hand knowledge and experience as to which t-commerce strategies work and which don’t. If you don’t have the resources to develop simultaneous t-commerce campaigns, then play the odds by prioritizing the most promising and tackle them sequentially (see #1).

4. Choose Your Partners Wisely: This advice from Verizon’s Rachelle Zoffer pretty much covers life itself. But when it comes to app development, I’d listen to the folks from FIOS as they’ve worked with a wide array of developers populating their widget marketplace. In addition to the History widget, Zoffer spotlighted FIOS’s successful provisioning campaigns that enable customers to purchase premium content and sports services directly from their TVs along with a concierge service that connects viewers to local products and services (think flowers, food and movie tickets). So what attributes should you look for in a t-commerce partner? Zoffer puts experience first on the list and ability to work well with others a close second.

View the slideshow from the presentation here:

TVOT NYC Intensive T-Commerce Panel Presentation December, 2011
To this last point, I don’t think it’s an accident that it took three experienced iTV / t-commerce companies working together to deliver this season’s most innovative t-commerce application. What about you?

New York — Verizon is already seeing strong demand for a new tcommerce product that allows its FiOS TV subscribers to buy products from History channel with their remote controls, executives said here Monday at the TVOT NYC Intensive.

“The initial data … has exceeded all of our expectations wildly,” said Delivery Agent CEO Mike Fitzsimmons, whose company is providing the technology for the tcommerce service.

Fitzsimmons said it took 500 days for Delivery Agent to build the tcommerce app for FiOS TV. While he said it is more difficult to deploy tcommerce through a digital cable platform compared to using mobile phone or Web applications, he emphasized that offering tcommerce through a remote control drives higher response rates.

The tcommerce app allows FiOS TV subscribers watching History shows to buy products related to its programs. For example, viewers of its Pawn Stars series can buy classic bikes from Schwinn, presidential memorabilia from the Franklin Mint and DVDs of the series.

Verizon director of content acquisition and programming Rachelle Zoffer said the company is sending its pay TV subscribers a separate bill for products ordered through the tcommerce platform. “We don’t want your FiOS TV bill to get higher,” she said during a panel session focused on tcommerce.

After years of hype, tcommerce is beginning to draw more interest from cable operators and programmers. The technology is also attracting investments from major technology companies and venture capital firms. Delivery Agent announced last month that it had raised $35.5 million from Intel Capital, Liberty Global Ventures, Grazia Equity and other investors in its fifth round of funding.

For years, media executives and marketers have longed for the day when a viewer could be watching an episode of “The Good Wife,” say, click a dress worn by star Julianna Margulies and instantly be able to purchase it right from the television screen.

On Monday, that scenario inched a little closer to reality. The cable network History, programming distributor Verizon FiOS and technology company Delivery Agent, which manages online stores for many television networks, unveiled a T-commerce (television commerce) initiative that would enable subscribers to buy items shown the cable network’s programs.

Taking part in the T-commerce effort are History shows like “Pawn Stars” and “Ice Road Truckers.” During a show, an icon will appear on the screen that the viewer can click on to purchase items.

“The reason the History Shop initiative will work is because it allows viewers to see and buy things at the moment they’re most interested, while still being able to watch their show,” said Mark Garner, a senior vice president at History parent A&E Television Networks.

For now, service is only available for Verizon FiOS customers, but the plan is to roll it out to other distributors and extend the service to other A&E networks including Lifetime — which seems a natural, given its hit fashion show “Project Runway.”

History has teamed with Delivery Agent on a TV-commerce app that’s launched on Verizon FiOS TV.

Termed “the first contextual commerce application accessible to network programming viewers,” the History Shop app lets FiOS TV viewers use their remote to buy merchandise related to and seen on series such as Pawn Stars, American Pickers and Ice Road Truckers.

History Shop app on FiOS TV”History Shop app on FiOS TV”In a release, History said the app was built by Delivery Agent and tested in Verizon’s labs and in-home trials. It taps into Delivery Agent’s proprietary database of products mapped to television content in order to present the right products at the right time.

For example, while watching Pawn Stars, customers can use their FiOS TV remote to click to purchase a wide range of brands and products including (pictured): classic bikes from Schwinn, vintage-inspired consumer electronics from Crosley, Civil War and presidential memorabilia from The Franklin Mint and the complete show season on DVD.

“The History Shop application is an exciting first, because it enables viewers to see and buy things at the moment they’re most interested — while their favorite shows are on screen,” Mark Garner, SVP of Distribution Business Development, Analytics & Marketing at A+E Networks, said in the release. “This is a great convenience for History fans and a great selling opportunity for us.”

To access the new application, viewers watching History programming click on the History icon that will appear on the TV screen. The application displays shopping items for the customer to view and purchase on the right hand side of the TV screen while the television program runs on the left.

Viewers can then use their remote control to purchase items and securely check out using Delivery Agent’s TV Wallet transaction engine.

Viewers also can access the History Shop application through the FiOS TV Application Storefront under the Featured and Shopping categories.

History is available for FiOS TV customers on channels 128 in standard-definition and 628 in high-definition.

“FiOS TV is a highly innovative and interactive service that puts technology in viewers’ hands to enhance and transform their home-entertainment experiences,” Rachelle Zoffer, director, Content Acquisition and Programming for Verizon, said in the release. “Our strategic partnership with A+E Networks and Delivery Agent breaks down old technology barriers and frees subscribers to access products they want in new and exciting ways.”

Monetizing content for more than 40 leading television programmers, Delivery Agent operates and manages the online stores for more than 350 television shows and has secured the rights to market and sell more than one million products connected to television content, including A+E Network’s shows, the release said.

“The technology advancements driving this ground-breaking television commerce initiative are extraordinary,” Mike Fitzsimmons, Delivery Agent CEO, said in the release. “This is the first time anyone has successfully aligned the goals and requirements of the three essential players in contextual
television commerce; the entertainment television programmer, the television service provider and the brands/products seen in entertainment content.”