Thanks to TiVo and Amazon, you may never have to leave your couch again. The two services have teamed up, starting today, to take the concept of a home shopping network to the next level (and frankly, I bet QVC is kicking themselves they didn’t think of something like this first).

As of today, if you have TiVo and an Amazon account, you can shop for the things you see on television, as you see them, using your remote control. TiVo will be adding this service for all subscribers except those using TiVo on DirectTV (yet another reason DirectTV is worthless).

Currently the “product purchase” feature is being rolled out slowly for control of scalability. At the moment the service is being extended to talk shows and news parody shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with David Letterman and The Daily Show. If someone is on any one of those shows promoting a CD, book, movie or other product, TiVo users can use the new product purchase feature to buy it right away.

As the product purchase feature is scaled in to the TiVo service, TiVo plans to also allow advertisers to join the fray. Users can look forward to real time product purchase options in commercials and live shows once the second half of the roll out happens later this year.

This is huge news on a number of levels. By taking this action, TiVo and Amazon could be placing themselves at the forefront of a television advertising revolution in the same way that Google positioned itself as the online ad dominator and innovator early in the game. The fact that TiVo implemented this before an online ad giant like Google got to it is phenomenal and bodes well for keeping the playing field level.

Recently Google launched the GoogleTV concept in preparation for competing with AppleTV and other services that let you view online content on your television. When that idea was unveiled, speculation started that Google AdSense on your television wouldn’t be far behind. I’m of the opinion that TiVo’s smile is because it just beat one of the heavy hitters of ad revenue to the punch.

“Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale. What we are trying to do is to create all the underpinnings of a future business model for television.”

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 6:03 am under Google.  Print This Post

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