Announcing NBCUniversal Checkout, Feat. Evan Moore, Vice President of Commerce Partnerships

Future Commerce Podcast: eCommerce, DTC and Retail Strategy

What is NBC Universal Checkout

• NBC Universal Checkout is a native shopping experience embedding within any NBC content page.
• Whether it's a text based article, a static page, or even a video, it can be transformed into a native shopping experience. When the viewer encounters a product, they can click on the product to see more information about it, add it to a shopping cart, pay, and check out all without leaving the NBCU site.
• Context is really important during the experience - finding alignment between retailers with product and property within a piece of content within their portfolio.

Universal Checkout’s Launch on SYFY Wire After Dark

• On SYFY Wire After Dark, they can play tastemaker by making trustworthy recommendations to their audience.
• They can also expose the audience to collaborative products, like the Wonder Woman 1984 sunglasses from goodr.

Who’s the Retailer?

• NBC doesn’t see themselves as a retailer, but as a channel for retail partners.
• For partner retailers, orders that happen through NBC Universal Checkout drop into their eCommerce system as if they were actually placed on their own website, and then they can fulfill direct to the consumer and own the customer relationship going forward.
• Where retailers and consumers come together is a sort of audience-driven marketplace - which is important, especially in a time when commerce is shifting to primarily digital.
• NBC Universal Checkout will eventually move to other platforms, but for now is available only on the web.

The Future of NBC’s Universal Checkout

• NBC looks at this as a business opportunity on par with anything else that they're pursuing.
• NBC generates valuable shopping intent and Universal Checkout creates the opportunity to capture that intent.
• Right now, their focus is more in partnering with retailers than creating their own products and brands out of the existing NBC properties.
• Universal Checkout is only on the web right now.

Links

• Evan’s last appearance on Future Commerce in Episode 128 - Bringing Commerce Closer: Audience First
• NBCU’s press release for Universal Checkout
• The first Universal show using Universal Checkout: Syfy Wire After Dark
• Syfy Wire After Dark: How to Shop guide video
• goodr Limited Edition Wonder Woman 1984 Sunglasses‍
• Evan’s Twitter, where he posts “bad memes too late”