Convergence of Video Entertainment and Commerce
Have you ever wondered where to buy those Nike’s from Forrest Gump? If you Google it, you’ll get back 2.58M results, but why do you have to? Why can’t you pause the show and click to buy it?
The obvious answer is that it isn’t a simple problem or we would have this feature right now. However, with recent trends in Big Data and Machine Learning, I don’t believe it is still years away. Let me explain.
To solve this business problem, two major pieces of functionality need to be addressed. First, each program must be parsed frame by frame to detect the consumer products shown in each scene. It is not enough to know that there is a car driving in a frame. We need to know what kind of car it is, i.e. Porsche Cayenne or Honda Civic hatchback. While this could be done manually, it is very labor intensive, and the value of each product in a scene is small. It is the aggregate value of scene-level product identification across shows at scale where value is created.
With recent advances in Machine Learning, computers are now able to parse video streams and identify objects and people. In fact, cloud solutions like AWS already offer celebrity recognition. You can bet they are working on identifying whether a can of soda in a scene is a Coke or a Pepsi. Getting to a fully automated solution may take some time, but a combination of ML and humans should be able to start addressing this problem. For example, a machine could identify a generic product in a scene like a blender on a counter, then a human can be used to identify it as a Ninja Professional Blender.
Once you have identified that blender as a Ninja, the second major problem is to create the “buy” button. This requires an understanding of where to purchase the product or a similar one. This in turn requires connecting to a shopping service that can power this purchase. The good news is that Google, Amazon, and others have spent years building solutions to this problem. When you search for that Ninja Professional Blender, they know where you can buy it and will happily direct you.
The other critical factor is the UX. How do you present an offer that doesn’t distract the user and that works with a TV entertainment device? This is where Amazon and Walmart now have the upper hand. If you are using an Amazon Fire, they should be able to directly link an offer in the UX to your shopping cart.
The latest news in the TV Entertainment sphere is that Walmart purchased Vizio, the TV manufacturer. Based on the articles and press releases, the value creation of the deal appears to be focused on advertising. No doubt this is a very strong use case. The next logical step is of course to drive the actual purchase though. Again with Vizio’s OS, there is no question there will be a linkage to your Walmart account. Adding a product to your cart or executing a one-click purchase should be straightforward.
This capability should not be limited to a Video Entertainment OS with a shopping solution. As long as objects can be identified and linked to real-world products, any Video Entertainment OS should be able to add this capability. For example, Roku could link up with Target allowing purchases with a click on their OS. If consumers are willing to link multiple commerce sites to their Video Entertainment OS, multiple purchase options could be surfaced for the same product. In addition, a wider range of products could be covered by multiple retailers.
While this creates new revenue opportunities for Video Entertainment solutions, what about brand manufacturers and retailers? Is there an opportunity for them in this convergence beyond bidding on buy links?
Let’s go back to Forest Gump’s Nike shoe example. A Video Entertainment OS could generate revenue by placing a “buy” button for those Nike Cortez. For most brand manufacturers or retailers, a purchase opportunity for that specific shirt offers little value since they don’t carry it. As this convergence accelerates, different opportunities emerge. As we scale to thousands of programs, the hit rate for an individual manufacturer goes up. Knowing that your products are prominently used in tens of shows makes it worth your while to bid on those buy links. Also, retailers or brand manufacturers could market their products using the tie-in to the shows, i.e. buy these Nikes as seen on Forest Gump.
The convergence of video entertainment and commerce will be a reality soon. Recent advances in video stream analysis will unlock this opportunity allowing top entertainment OSes to create new revenue streams beyond advertising. Video entertainment OSes, brands, and retailers need to start planning for this future state to ensure they can capitalize on the new gold rush.
