BENTONVILLE, Ark. & SAN JOSE, Calif.— Walmart and Roku have announced a major partnership that hopes to make connected TVs the next big e-commerce shopping destination. 

As part of the effort, consumers will be able to purchase featured products from shoppable ads on Roku’s streaming platform and have them fulfilled by Walmart. 

To buy goods, Roku users would simply press “OK” with the remote on a shoppable ad and proceed to checkout with their payment details easily pre-populated from Roku Pay, Roku’s payments platform. 

From there, tapping “OK” on the Walmart checkout page places the order. A Walmart purchase confirmation is then emailed with shipping, return, and support information. 

While companies have long been interested in turning TV into a shopping platform, such t-commerce efforts have not successfully challenged the dominance of online retailers like Amazon, in part because it is much easier to navigate through websites on a PC or a mobile phone. 

The two companies hope that their new partnership will push TV shopping beyond QR code and change the way customers shop and interact with video content by making it easy to discover products and by providing a seamless checkout experience that enables purchases directly at the time of inspiration. 

The effort could help Roku and Walmart, which is already a major ecommerce player, get a leg up on Amazon, Google, Facebook and Pinterest in their connected TV and ecommerce offerings. 

It also poses additional competition to companies like NBCUniversal that have been expanding their own shoppable TV experiences. 

“We’re working to connect with customers where they are already spending time, shortening the distance from discovery and inspiration to purchase,” said William White, chief marketing officer, Walmart. “No one has cracked the code around video shoppability. By working with Roku, we’re the first to market retailer to bring customers a new shoppable experience and seamless checkout on the largest screen in their homes – their TV.” 

The partnership draws on Walmart’s expertise in evaluating customer behaviors and then ramping up those commerce offerings to customers where and how they want to shop, including during moments of entertainment. 

In addition, Roku’s purpose-built advertising tech stack will bring all the benefits of streaming TV advertising – targeting, optimization, and measurement – to the commerce partnership, the companies said. 

“We’re making shopping on TV as easy as it is on social,” said Peter Hamilton, head of TV commerce, Roku. “For years, streamers have purchased new Roku devices and signed up for millions of subscriptions with their Roku remote. Streaming commerce brings that same ease and convenience to marketers and shoppers.” 

OneView, Roku’s ad-buying platform for TV streaming, will have the exclusive capability to activate and measure these shoppable ads. Additionally, marketers will be able to use Roku Brand Studio to design custom creative and branded content built for TV streaming and shopping.  

SAN FRANCISCO—How nice would it have been if you could have gotten your Christmas shopping done with a simple push on your TV remote? That would be something of interest to 76 percent of Americans according to a t-commerce study from Connekt.

The report showed that those three-quarters of respondents had a strong interest in shopping through their TVs in real time if the option was available. Of those interested, 65 percent would purchase products shown in TV ads, while 35 percent would be inclined to purchase products featured in TV shows.

Currently, the biggest obstacle might be letting people know that this technology is actually available. A majority of respondents (78 percent) said they were not familiar with technology that enables them to buy products using a TV remote. Still, there is a growing interest in t-commerce; 42 percent of those surveyed said they will likely buy products through their TV in 2018.

Among the top reasons for people’s reason is convenience, according to 74 percent of the respondents. The ability to buy right when they see a product they liked came in second at 66 percent. The ability to use a new technology and shopping from a comfortable setting also were popular options.

As far as what people want to buy off of their TVs, household goods came in at 76 percent, followed by consumer electronics at 67 percent, clothing with 47 percent, and home and garden with 44 percent.

Some holiday shopping this year has already been done through Connekt’s ShopTVTM application, with the top shopped categories coming in as consumer electronics, home accessories, fashion accessories, automotive, hobbies and toys, sports merchandise and wellness.

NEW YORK—Your future shopping crazes could be satisfied with a click of the TV remote thanks to the possibilities of next-gen television. TV-based shopping—or t-commerce—is catching the attention of both viewers and station groups, though it may be a few years before it reaches its true potential.

Read the full story on TVT’s sister publication Multichannel News.

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