Monday, August 14, 2006

Here's An Idea

According to Paidcontent, the folks over at the Home Shopping Network have enabled click-to-purchase right through the teevee.

MTV networks/ Fuse or other music networks should follow up on this. In my dream scenario:
  • Customers would register their download store preference (iTunes, Napster) at the network's website, including username and password.
  • Songs that are available for purchase would have a special icon on screen.
  • When they see the "purchase enabled" icon on the screen, the user can click a button on their remote, and that track will be added to a queue to purchase.
  • The cable network makes money from the referral fee to others, and there's a tangible conversion rate from viewership to intent to purchase to actual purchase. Very viable statistics.
This could also work with television commercials (buy the song from the Honda commecial) and TV shows (Gray's Anatomy, The OC.)

If anyone implements this idea I expect a cut. :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bill, you are certainly on the right track here. The logistics and operations of the business need to be worked out 100% and refined, but I'd love to see a central database somewhere that may span even beyond a single shopping experience (not just MTV) that people can go and insert their preferences. If they are shopping online, mobily (word?) or any other way, this could help them with a much more efficient checkout process.

Old Father William said...

Ideas:
#1 DVRs (i.e. TiVo and competitors from TimeWarner or Comcast cable) could do this easily. People would be sitting there at home, see something they like and then hit one of the "reserved" buttons on the remote. This is the "license IP" button which instantly downloads the music or a license to view the video etc on an iPod.

#2 Bar codes and special 2-way transmitters (maybe a celluar signal)? People can have the equivalent of a bar code scanner (like cell phone attachment) and then anyone (and I mean anyone) who wants to license the IP for their song movie photo whatever, just needs to discreetly put their barcode in the lower left hand portion. Consumers can scan it and bang! This can be conceptually fun. There you are sitting in the movie theatre when the soundtrack plays song X and bzzzztttt... a hundred people set phasers to buy