Fresh off an acquisition of flash sales site Billion Dollar Babes, TV e-commerce company Delivery Agent is making another purchase this week: interactive TV firm The Band. It appears that Delivery Agent is spending some of that $25 million it raised back in October.
The Band is an interactive media agency that helps deploy campaigns across TV platforms including cable, satellite and mobile, specifically focusing interactive e-commerce campaigns. For example, The Band’s technology will allow TV viewers to make purchases from their TV sets with their remote control. Through this acquisition Delivery Agent can scale its clients’ commerce and marketing campaigns across the Internet, mobile and television.
Delivery Agent helps TV networks monetize content through two distinct channels. First, the company creates online marketplaces for products and merchandise that are seen on television shows. Delivery Agent has signed on all the major networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and MTV Networks. Delivery Agent catalogues products appearing in movies and shows and then creates an e-commerce site where products can be purchases. By outsourcing all e-commerce for products seen on their networks to Delivery Agent, networks are able to monetize their content while keeping their overhead costs low.
Delivery Agent’s second service is coordinating advertising from the brands that manufacture the products that are shown on a networks’ TV shows. Delivery Agent will go through the index of products that will be airing on a show prior to when the episode airs, and then reach out to the brand and offer them the ability to buy an ad package for the show.
Mike Fitzsimmons, Delivery Agent’s founder and CEO, says that his company’s goal is basic: to try to make more money for TV networks through e-commerce. The idea of the ability to “click-to-buy” applications for online video and mobile content has always been appealing, says Fitzsimmons, and The Band’s technology helps TV networks do this. In fact, Delivery Agent just signed two major agreements with cable operators to allow viewers to make e-commerce purchases via their remote controls. The deals are set to be announced in Q3 of this year.