Carl Fremont: Introducing Video 4.0 and the Power of Shoppable TV

“Interactive video drives deeper engagement with brands and brings the point of sale closer.”

The CEO of Quigley explains Why Interactive video is the new Direct response.

By carl fremont

I left a traditional ad agency in the mid-1980s to go to one of the original direct-to-consumer marketing firms. The direct relationship between brands and consumers seems obvious today, but it was a new way of thinking then. Our goal in reaching out straight to the consumer was to bridge the gap between brand, consideration, and sale. Or, put another way, to bring the point of sale closer.

At the time, this meant direct mail campaigns or print catalogues that introduced consumers to a product and gave them an 800 number that would allow them to easily buy it over the phone. It also meant infomercials and home-shopping television. This programming was exclusively designed to engage a consumer, introduce a product, and allow them to buy it immediately. While we didn’t use this word at the time, we were essentially creating “shoppable” ads.

The technology at the time wasn’t advanced enough for viewers to order directly from their television. All we could do in the beginning was offer phone numbers that were primarily called from land lines, as cell phones weren’t heavily prominent at the time and smart phones didn’t exist. Later, we could point shoppers to a website on which they could complete a purchase, but that shopping experience often required some searching before they got to the exact product they wanted.

Early Attempts

Incorporating “shoppability” into television has been a goal of advertisers likely since the very first paid advertisement aired in 1941. Qube launched in the late 1970s promising customers a mix of television, pay-per-view programming, and interactive content. While people liked it, it was not seen as a commercial success.  

Similarly, in 1997, Time Warner ran an experiment offering customers in Orlando a premium cable box that allowed them to shop, bank, and order pizza from their TV in addition to choosing movies on demand and playing games with neighbors. It was ahead of its time, though, in that the technology cost the company far more than it brought in. When it canceled the program, Time Warner insisted that it should be seen as a successful test of what consumers wanted rather than a marketing failure.

A few years later, Ondigital tried again with ONnet, a system that promised internet access—including shopping—through its set-top box, but its promise of “full internet access” was ruled misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority.

Digital marketing has come a long way since set top boxes as cable television gave way to the internet and people turned to streaming services to watch their favorite shows. Still, much of what we consider shoppable video today remains technologically clunky at best. From the marketer’s perspective, it is usually still manually created and requires an ad unit to the side of the video. From the consumer’s perspective, it often includes a single link to only one of the products they just saw or a link to a landing page which requires them to search further for the thing they were after.  

The good news is that there is new technology that is changing all of this—think of it as direct video 4.0.

Video 4.0

I recently hosted a fireside chat at StreamTV’s Advertising Summit with Gary Mittman, CEO of KERV Interactive, a company that is a pioneer in this new technology. KERV’s AI can take existing video and break it down into individual scenes and then objects within them. Using patented pixel-edge technology, the AI then identifies whatever it’s told to find within the scene, whether that’s a person or a product. These objects are correlated against a product catalogue or other information from the marketer. With that, the video becomes clickable—each object can take consumers to a separate link where they can learn more or buy it right there, within the video. 

This was the technology behind the enormously successful partnership between Vogue and Neiman Marcus. The three-minute ad, “A Night at Neiman’s,” featured actress Taraji P. Henson having a grand time after realizing she was locked in an empty Neiman Marcus for the night. The video had more than 100 interaction points and “Shop Now” buttons that took people to the exact product that Henson was admiring or interacting with, within the content, whether it was a leather jacket or a pair of sunglasses. Within days, many of the products had sold out. The granularity of the shoppability had never been done before.  

The technology can also help consumers find the lowest priced product. For example, KERV created a digital ad for Huggies that not just links to various retailers like Amazon or Walmart but pulls current product and availability information from the retailers’ sites and sorts by price. A consumer can comparison shop and complete a transaction without ever leaving the video experience. 

Truly shoppable television shows are now possible as well because of streaming services (most people are watching on internet-connected devices) and this technology. Each object in a scene can be linked to a QR code. Audiences could pause and buy the shoes Savannah Guthrie is wearing, the wineglasses favored by the Real Housewives, or the wedding dress Kate wore in the final episodes of This is Us. Viewers can own the product before they even un-pause the show.

This kind of interactive video drives deeper engagement with brands and brings the point of sale closer. Shoppable ads can reach consumers who are already in the market and considering a purchase as well as impulse shoppers who want something they’ve just seen. This is the next generation of 800 numbers, static websites, and even digital ads, bringing the point of sale closer than it has ever been. This is video 4.0. 

September 7, 2022