tcommerce

Verizon has launched a Spend Smart interactive TV coupon widget in its FiOS TV Widget Bazaar Applications Marketplace as part of a cross-platform initiative with electronic and mobile couponing specialist, Cellfire, that also sees it offering free Spend Smart coupons on its Wireless and Internet services. According to the company, Cellfire's Spend Smart coupons cover a wide range of products and can be redeemed at over 4,000 locations of more than 20 national grocery chains, including ShopRite, Safeway and Kroger. Coupon brands and products rotate every two weeks, the company says, with more than $25 in monthly grocery discounts available at any given time.

In a posting on over-the-top-TV specialist Boxee's corporate blog, Wednesday, CEO Avner Ronen announced that the company plans to release a payment platform this summer that will allow users to purchase content "with one click on the remote." According to Ronen, the content partners the service will launch with (note: Ronen did not identify them) will offer shows, movies and channels that were previously unavailable to Boxee users, and will be able to package and price their content "as they wish," including offering it on a pay-per-view or subscription basis.

New York-area MSO, Cablevision, is trumpeting the results of the first set of campaigns powered by its new proprietary (i.e. not EBIF-based) interactive TV advertising service, Optimum Select. The service presents viewers with a "select button overlay" which appears at the bottom of the TV screen during a commercial and which invites them to press the "SEL" button on the remote control for more information on an advertised product. Once the viewer presses "SEL," the current program is shifted to the top-right corner of the screen to allow continued viewing, and the viewer is then presented with several possible options, including receiving a free sample of, a coupon for, or additional information on the advertised product.

In an interview with Steve Donohue of Cable Digital News, David Kline, president and COO of MSO Cablevision's Rainbow Advertising Sales unit, has stressed the importance of tcommerce to the MSO, confirming that it plans to roll out tcommerce capabilities next year. "We're going to pursue it vigorously," Kline said. "Being able to buy things off the TV is as much a consumer product as it is an advertising product. You're going to see a lot more of it." Kline did not, however, elaborate on how Cablevision plans to fulfill orders generated by its planned tcommerce service.

The US's largest cable MSO, Comcast, and home shopping network, HSN, on Wednesday announced that they have begun the nationwide roll-out of an ETV/EBIF version of HSN's flagship interactive TV application, Shop by Remote, which allows viewers to use their remote controls to shop and make purchases (note: the roll-out has actually been underway for some time now--see the article published on itvt.com, June 3rd).

In a corporate blog posting, Wednesday, Verizon's director of external communications, Bobbi Henson, announced that the company has partnered with home shopping network, HSN, to create a new widget version of the latter's Shop by Remote interactive TV application for the Verizon FiOS TV platform (note: Comcast has just announced the national roll-out of an EBIF version of Shop by Remote--see the article in this issue). The new widget will feature a "deal of the day" exclusively for FiOS TV customers, Henson said.

Interactive TV applications provider, icueTV, and Comcast Media Center (CMC) will today announce an agreement to deploy a full suite of icueTV's tcommerce applications on CMC's HITS AxIS platform. (Note: HITS AxIS--whose name stands for "Headend In The Sky Advanced Interactive Services," and which was developed in collaboration with Vidiom and TVWorks--is a centralized platform that operates on the NAS and DAC headend-management platforms and that is designed to facilitate the deployment and management of ETV/EBIF and OCAP/tru2way applications on cable systems serving small- to mid-sized markets.

Comcast's advertising sales arm, Comcast Spotlight, on Wednesday announced a new service, called Video Circulars On Demand, which takes retailers' print advertising materials--including weekly newspaper inserts ("circulars"), display ads and catalogs--and converts them into on-demand video slideshows.

Interactive marketing company, Zugara, and RichRelevance, a company that specializes in personalization and product-recommendation tools for ecommerce sites, on Monday announced the launch of a new, augmented reality-driven "social shopping" application, called "Fashionista," that they describe as combining "the benefits of the fitting room with the convenience of online shopping and the power of the social Web." The app, which is initially being offered by fashion retailer, Tobi.com, is billed by the companies as combining augmented reality, motion capture and real-time personalization in order to create a "more social and intuitive" way to shop for clothes on the Web.

In a posting on its corporate blog, Monday, Overlay.TV, an Ottawa, Canada-based start-up that offers a platform which, among other things, allows users to add a layer of custom-designed, clickable content over broadband videos (note: for a detailed overview of Overlay.TV's platform, see the article published on itvt.com, October 2nd, 2008), announced that it has decided to focus its efforts on Overlay.TV for Retail, the interactive video commerce platform that it launched in June (