Your TV remote control will have a red "Buy it Now" button. During any* commercial for a product you want, press the red button, and the product will be delivered to your home (along with a bill).
*Of course, this delivery system would be inappropriate for certain products (e.g. cars), and not all commercials would offer this service. You could tell if a commercial offers this service because a red sign stays on the screen during the commercial that says, "BUY IT NOW".
This would be a useful marketing technique because sometimes viewers feel like buying something while they are looking at it, but their urge fades when it's out of sight, out of mind.
The BUY IT NOW feature could be extended to real TV shows, too. If, during an episode of Sex and the City, Charlotte has a pretty handbag, a BUY IT NOW sign would light up with an arrow pointing to it and the price, and you could instantly purchase that same handbag.
Ideally, BUY IT NOW would be an option, like closed-captioning, that you could turn on and off. However, unfortunately I don't foresee that option being offered to us. Especially if AOL/Time Warner is the company to market this idea.-- phundug, Jul 01 2003 Site Sells Products That Appear on TV http://web.mit.edu/...t-appear-on-tv.htmlThe MIT Brand Culture Blog just hosted an article on Visure, a company that wants to do something like this. [land, Oct 27 2005] Might be hard to tell what people meant to buy. I think some people might be surprised and disappointed if they pressed the button during "Sex and the City" and then received... a handbag.-- hob, Jul 01 2003 The sign would have to have arrows (like in Pop-Up Video) and specify what size package you'd get.-- phundug, Jul 01 2003 That's just click-through applied to TV sets, so you're probably right about it being inevitable. Already we're seeing banner ads around the edges of the screen.
Pardon me if I don't vote for it, for obvious reasons.-- DrCurry, Jul 01 2003 It does have the air of inevitability. I usually vote for this sort of stuff. Just because I personally don't like it doesn't mean it's not "good."-- snarfyguy, Jul 01 2003 How do you define "good" then?-- DrCurry, Jul 01 2003 Needs to have a joystick to cycle through the 'for sale' items in the scenes, above which a little cursor could hover and track.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 01 2003 Nah, a laser pointer in the remote would allow you to select the item unobtrusively. For unshippable items, local vendors could be sent an RFQ.-- phoenix, Jul 01 2003 Sorry, that wasn't very clear. What I meant by "good" was "likely to be implemented in the real world."-- snarfyguy, Jul 01 2003 I love this idea. Especially for those late-night pizza cravings when the domino's commercial comes on. Have a brick-oven baked cheeze-topped croissant with a side of marinara sauce.-- Freefall, Jul 01 2003 Be careful of what you wish for - it's coming to a Television near you!-- valeriestjohn, Oct 23 2005 No offence [phundug], but I really need to vote against this idea, purely because of the hatefulness, and the fact that it will most likely happen.-- hidden truths, Oct 24 2005 This could very well be the next implementation of commercial-free television. Rather than paying for your favorite movie channel you could get it for free and then as various items appeared in the movie you could "BUY IT NOW" as you saw it.
And to avoid confusion, when you hit the button, the cost and item description would appear on the screen. That way if you wanted the handbag instead of the teapot, you could easily specify what you wanted.-- Jscotty, Oct 24 2005 What [hidden] said.-- wagster, Oct 24 2005 [+] for prescience, phundug.
As you can see from the link to the MIT Brand Culture Blog above, there are people out there kneading and baking even as we speak.-- land, Oct 27 2005 random, halfbakery