Glance and Samsung want to turn the TV into a source for inspiration, decoding style for consumers.
COURTESY OF GLANCE
Historically, selling through the TV has been a challenge. In the late 70’s, for example, Warner Cable introduced QUBE, an experimental two-way cable television system that enabled live interactivity. It never made it off the launch pad.
Now, Glance and Samsung think they have the winning formula. The two companies formed a partnership to transform the living room screen into a personalized AI-powered shopping destination. The first-to-market agentic commerce experience will be available across millions of Samsung smart televisions in the United States.
The integration, built on Glance’s proprietary AI platform, runs natively on Samsung’s first party operating system, called Tizen OS, turning the living room screen into a generative-AI-powered, interactive browsing vehicle.
Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO at inMobi and Glance, said, “Every one of us sits in front of the television getting inspired but not being able to act on it. With the partnership between Samsung and Glance, that’s going to become a reality.”
“The traditional way of shopping on the big screen is very primitive,” said Tewari. “The Home Shopping Network is very primitive and not very efficient.”
“The agent uses context to surface products,” he added. “It analyzes what shows you’ve watched and can understand what inspires you. The agents are really trying to come in and enable humans to make better decisions.”
“A second device is needed to pay for any products,” Tewari said. “Making a payment from a TV is hard. If you want to complete a transaction, when you want to check out, you have to use a phone.”
The partnership has benefits for brands. The integration creates for brands and advertisers, a measurable, performance-driven commerce channel that reaches millions of consumers long before they open a browser or pick up a phone.
Dan Glassman, senior director and head of new business development for Samsung Electronics, said Samsung intentionally targeted living room screens. “The living room offers some benefits above and beyond what you can do on mobile and desktop, particularly when you include AI,” he said. “We’re talking about the biggest screen in the living room where you’re able to have a natural language conversation and talk to Glance’s agent about different shopping interests. That becomes highly personalized.”
“It’s rich media,” he added. “It’s immersive on the big screen so it’s complementary to other forms of shopping. This is bringing a big screen experience to an area of commerce that hasn’t really been cracked yet.”
Glance’s proprietary platform enables two-way, interactive shopping on the TV. Viewers can create personalized shopping feeds and virtual wardrobes, and explore fashion, accessories, and lifestyle products without the need for a smartphone or secondary device. Because interaction is handled through voice and remote, friction is reduced at the precise moment when consumer attention and inspiration intersect, Glassman said.
The Glance agent on all Samsung smart TV models from 2020 onward is accessible through the Home Screen’s “For You” and “Apps” tabs.
“We have a lot of applications on our TVs,” Glassman said. “That’s encompassing all the media systems and applications plus the gaming hub and art mode. It’s the front porch of Samsung TVs. Glance will be prominently placed so when you boot up the TV, Glance will be in a variety of different merchandising rows and editorial units that would drive users to Glance.”
“It’s a unique product,” said Sucharita Kodali, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “There isn’t anything like it and they seem to have this big distribution with Samsung on lock screens. That should get them a lot of awareness and hopefully some adoption too. I haven’t seen any solutions that are tracking fashion discovery the way that they are. ”
“It’s my understanding that it’s not going to be intrusive,” Kodali said. “The experience is kind of midstream. I think that it’s primarily on the lock screen, it just may be in the background. It’s not something that interrupts an existing experience. It’s not an interstitial in the middle of a show.”
“Shopping through the TV never took off because there wasn’t always the hardware,” she said. “This should give Samsung and Glance a lot of data from different markets and different consumers. They’ll discover who are the audiences to use their products. They can’t be all things to all people, but if they can discover how they can be some things to some people, that’s hopefully the goal here.”
Leave a comment