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Ad Tech

Amazon Ads and Samsung Are Turning the TV Remote Into a Buy Button

Ad Tribe Editorial2 min read
Amazon Ads and Samsung Are Turning the TV Remote Into a Buy Button

Every version of shoppable TV has needed a second screen to close the sale. Amazon and Samsung just removed that step entirely.

The television remote has spent seventy years doing one job: changing the channel. Amazon and Samsung want it to start doing a second one, closing the sale.

What the two companies are building

Amazon Ads and Samsung TV Plus are rolling out remote-enabled interactive video ads, letting a viewer add a product straight to an Amazon cart, sign up for something, or request more information, all without picking up a phone or scanning a QR code. The ad plays, the remote lights up with a prompt, and the transaction starts on the same screen the ad appeared on.

It sounds small. It is not. Every previous version of "shoppable TV" has relied on a second device, a phone for the QR code, a tablet for the companion app, to bridge the gap between seeing an ad and buying the product. That bridge is where most of the intent got lost. Putting the purchase path on the remote itself removes a step that has quietly killed shoppable TV's promise for a decade.

Why CTV needed this

Connected TV has always pitched itself as performance media wearing television's production values. Advertisers bought the pitch, budgets moved to CTV in a hurry, but the actual buying behaviour rarely showed up in the same session as the ad. Retailers ended up crediting other channels for sales that a TV ad likely started.

A remote-based add-to-cart flow, run by two companies that each control a real piece of the funnel, Amazon owns the cart, Samsung owns the living room screen, closes that gap in a way a browser cookie or a second-screen app never could.

The Ad Tribe read

Shoppable TV has been "almost here" since the first QR-code ad ran during a cricket match. What is different this time is who is building it: not a startup pitching a new format, but the company that owns the biggest checkout in the world and the company that owns the biggest living-room screen in many markets. If this works the way it is designed to, CTV stops being a brand-building channel with performance ambitions and starts being a performance channel that happens to look like television.