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Second screen commerce — the purchase of products shown on TV with a mobile device — could become a lucrative niche.
To begin with, consumers are already shopping on their mobile devices while watching TV (over 40 percent of tablet owners do so), so it's just a matter of steering shoppers toward specific products and shopping platforms.
Second screen commerce would also be a natural extension of advertising and product placement strategies. If you like a product advertised on television, it should be easy to act on impulse and purchase it immediately via a mobile device. Similarly, if there's a prominent product placement on a popular show, it should only take a few clicks to find it on your smartphone or tablet and buy it.
There are some experiments in this space that have seen some success.
The "Watch With eBay" app, for example, steers shoppers to merchandise and memorabilia tied to shows or sports teams, so we find things like viewers of the hit AMC crime drama "Breaking Bad" being able to purchase t-shirts with the logo of "Pollos Hermanos," a chicken restaurant that features prominently in the show.
However, before second screen commerce can take off, second screen behavior itself must become firmly established.
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