The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how shoppable TV is moving from being a shiny new toy to potentially becoming a staple of the TV and streaming business.

Shoppable TV is far from new, but the ability for people to purchase products from their TV screens is entering a new era. As the pandemic has made QR codes and online shopping more commonplace, shoppable TV is moving beyond the confines of QVC and 1-800 ads.

“10 years ago, you tried to slap a QR code on any media, and people tried to scan it, and they didn’t know how to download a scanner let alone use it,” said Amie Owen, U.S. head of shopper at UM Worldwide. A decade later, and the QR code has become “the universal language across all audiences.”

UM tested shoppable TV ads with some clients during the fourth quarter of last year and saw its performance exceeding digital and “sometimes better than retail media by itself,” Owen said. She added, “more times than not it’s usually meeting or beating benchmarks from a sales perspective.”

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