Shoppable TV's Unfinished Business … and What it Tells Us About the Future of Commerce
Consumers can now discover products almost anywhere — streaming platforms, social feeds, artificial intelligence platforms. However, the systems that actually complete the transaction still lag far behind. Nowhere is that gap more visible, or more instructive, than shoppable TV, a format that has cycled through waves of enthusiasm for decades but has never fully scaled. As new commerce channels emerge, shoppable TV offers an early look at a broader challenge: discovery can happen almost anywhere, but conversion still depends on whether the path to purchase feels seamless, trusted and connected.
The industry is still working to fulfill shoppable TV’s original promise: turning viewer interest into a more direct path to purchase. Media platforms, retailers, and advertisers are experimenting with interactive CTV formats, shoppable programming, QR-code-enabled experiences, and calls to action that move viewers from inspiration toward purchase. However, the broader adoption picture remains mixed. According to a recent EMARKETER survey, just 7.7 percent of U.S. adults have made a shoppable media purchase via CTV, compared with 16 percent who have bought through shoppable content on social media.
That gap between experimentation and adoption is where the next phase of shoppable TV will be decided.
Where the Commerce Handoff Still Breaks Down
Even as the experience improves, the handoff is where shoppable TV continues to face its biggest test. Imagine this scenario for a moment: A viewer sees a product during a streaming ad, scans a QR code, and lands in a generic mobile cart with no context from the ad they just watched. Or they try to buy directly through their TV and hit an authentication wall that kills the moment entirely. Payment credentials aren't consistent across platforms. Fulfillment, returns, and customer support frequently belong to different parties than the ones who created the viewing experience. The journey fractures at exactly the moment it should accelerate.
These aren't surface-level user experience problems. They're symptoms of infrastructure that was never designed to bridge media and commerce at the moment of intent.
Why Adoption Still Requires Careful Alignment
The friction isn't just technical, it's structural. Retailers want to own the customer relationship. Brands need attribution data to justify the spend. Platforms want native checkout that keeps users inside their ecosystem. Media networks want closed-loop measurement. Those goals can work together, but they don't automatically align.
When a commerce journey starts inside a third-party media environment, retailers still need confidence in what data they receive, who controls the customer relationship, and how the experience connects to checkout, fulfillment and support.
What Shoppable TV Reveals About AI Commerce
The link between shoppable TV and AI-driven commerce is not just that both promise a shorter path to purchase. It's that both introduce new handoffs between discovery and transaction. In shoppable TV, a product may be discovered inside a streaming or media experience, while the purchase journey continues through a cart, retailer site, marketplace, or mobile device. In agentic commerce, discovery may begin through an assistant or agent, but the transaction still depends on trusted connections to the retailer, payment provider, and fulfillment experience.
The next phase of commerce will not be won by discovery alone. It will depend on infrastructure that can align incentives across retailers, brands, platforms, and media networks while removing friction from the moment a consumer decides to act.
Scott Hendrickson is the chief revenue officer of firmly.ai, the agentic commerce platform for instant, inspired purchases.
