NBCUniversal and Walmart are teaming up to serve shoppable ads on Peacock inspired by products and looks featured in episodes of Bravo’s latest season of “Below Deck Mediterranean.”
The companies said the new commerce partnership enables Bravo viewers to “shop the moment” on Peacock for the first time. The feature is only available on certain dates, at which time viewers will be able to shop products directly from Walmart when watching next-day episodes of the Bravo reality TV series on Peacock – spanning “table settings to cookware in the galley, and yacht-life looks.”
The episodes with shoppable products are slated to air on Peacock November 7, December 5 and December 12. On those dates shoppable ads will surface where viewers can press arrow keys on their remote to browse an interactive on-screen carousel and then scan a QR code to checkout on the retailer’s website. It’s part of NBCU’s “Must ShopTV” feature, which is powered by AI tech company KERV Interactive to identify objects within the scene of show and allow viewers to shop products featured in or inspired by the content their watching. For example, NBCU said after a member of the Below Deck cast serves a sit-down dinner using certain dishware, viewers will see a shoppable ad unit where they can buy similar dishware on Walmart’s site. The items are paired with Walmart inventory, so ads only see options that are available for purchase.
“For so long, viewers had to take the hard route, scouring the internet to find a product like what they saw their favorite icons or creators use in-show,” said Josh Feldman, global chief marketing officer of Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal. “Now, through the power of Must ShopTV, and with Walmart as our launch partner, Bravo fans can get even closer to the content they love by discovering the brands that are already part of the story.”
In a statement, William White, CMO of Walmart U.S., said the retailer is always on the hunt for new ways to short the distance between inspiration and purchase.
“We know some of our customers’ most loved TV shows right now are on Bravo,” White commented. “By expanding our shoppable TV footprint with NBCUniversal, we're pairing our incredible product assortment with some of their most talked-about content so our customers can quickly purchase items inspired by their favorite cast-members while they're watching.”
The shoppable TV experience also utilizes NBCUniversal’s interactive shoppable Engagement Ads powered by Brightline, shoppable Pause Ads and “on platform experiences to steer fans on how to get the luxury yacht lifestyle they crave at affordable prices.”
For NBCU it marks another step in shoppable TV experiences. Shoppable TV is something NBCU SVP of Commerce Partnerships Evan Moore previously told StreamTV Insider that Peacock would serve as a testing ground for, in part to help prove out the company’s commerce content engine including NBCU Checkout that it aims to license to third-parties. In February the commerce executive said “Top Chef” and “Project Runway” were two shows on the streaming platform that NBCU was looking at to integrate shoppable TV components for this year.
NBCU has previously activated Shoppable TV features with QR codes that direct viewers to e-commerce websites within linear shows. While the new partnership with Walmart makes products featured or inspired by content shoppable via interactive ads and QR codes, it stops short of enabling users to complete a purchase on-screen.
Walmart has delved into shoppable ads before, including through a pilot program with Roku last year that allows customers to purchase products featured in ads (although not products inspired based on TV content as with the NBCU partnership) and checkout on-screen using their remote, with payment information is pre-populated from the Roku Pay payments platform. More recently, Roku in July integrated select Shopify merchants into one-click shoppable TV ads on the platform.