Canoe to Dip Toe in T-Commerce Waters?

It’s been roughly a decade since cable industry execs were avidly talking about letting viewers buy Jennifer Aniston’s sweater during an episode of Friends.

Now, cable could be about to gear up for its first big test of T-commerce across operators. Arthur Orduna, CTO of Canoe Ventures, said there should be announcements of T-commerce trials later in the fourth quarter. He was speaking on the digital media panel I moderated today at the 24th annual NAMIC conference at the New York Hilton, titled “Interactivity and Hyper-targeting: Redefining the Relationship Between Consumers, Advertisers and Entertainment Platforms.”

Orduna also said to expect players that big names in e-commerce to make an appearance in T-commerce.

So, does that mean Amazon.com on TV? Orduna wouldn’t say — stay tuned!

Currently, the cable industry has more than 15 million households enabled for EBIF, the CableLabs spec designed to provide interactive applications across every digital cable set-top deployed in the field, Orduna said. This summer, Canoe launched its first commercial service, an EBIF-based interactive TV capability that lets viewers request more information from an advertiser, initially available across parts of Comcast’s and TWC’s footprints.

Note that HSN already offers its “Shop by Remote” interactive shopping service in more than 30 million homes through Comcast, Dish Network, Verizon’s FiOS TV and Time Warner Cable Oceanic (see HSN Wins ‘Shop by Remote’ Patent).