Delivery Agent Inc. chairman and CEO Mike Fitzsimmons would like to make one thing perfectly clear: “The smartphone is definitively an inseparable part of TV commerce,” he tells Internet Retailer.

Fitzsimmons knows a little something about TV commerce—his company enables commerce via television, mobile and the web for three of the big four broadcast networks (CBS, NBC and Fox) and a Who’s Who of the top players in cable television (including HBO, Showtime, The History Channel, Turner Classic Movies, TNT, TBS, A&E, MSNBC, CNBC, SyFy, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and USA). Not to mention Delivery Agent’s partnerships with cable and satellite titans Comcast, AT&T U-verse, Time Warner Cable, Dish Network, DirecTV, Cablevision and Cox; and smart TV giants Samsung, LG and Panasonic.

Delivery Agent also operates ShopTV, an online marketplace in the form of a smart TV app that features merchandise from TV shows and networks as well as from retailers and brands including Wal-Mart, Fanatics, Wayfair.com, Ticketmaster, Pepsi, Cuisinart and Schwinn. Delivery Agent takes a cut of sales via ShopTV, though it declines to reveal its share, which varies.

“We power commerce in an omnichannel way, across connected devices where a TV viewer wants to purchase what they saw on TV,” Fitzsimmons says. “Branded web stores, mobile sites, social commerce, the app on smart TVs—omnichannel is different for us, though, because for us, actually shopping by TV is a reality today.”

And literally today, Delivery Agent has announced it is partnering with yet another giant. This time it’s consumer electronics manufacturer Sony Corp. Sony is integrating Delivery Agent’s ShopTV app into Sony’s TV SideView app for Apple iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Sony’s TV SideView app offers a dynamic graphical interface through which consumers can interact with their TV, view listings and operate embedded applications on a smart TV. By integrating ShopTV into TV SideView, the two companies are enabling consumers using the app to search, browse and buy products related to the programming or commercials they’re viewing. Sony’s TV SideView app, available for smartphones and tablets running Apple iOS and Google Android, has been downloaded 4 million times, Sony says.

Delivery Agent’s proprietary contextual database maps products to a network, show, episode, character, scene or ad and then displays those products for sale. The partnership with Sony advances a technology that Delivery Agent says is critical to the future of TV commerce: ACR, or automatic content recognition. Television networks, content producers and advertisers embed their programs and commercials with what amounts to an electronic fingerprint that is emitted by a smart TV and enables a “handshake” between a smart TV and a mobile device.

So, for example, HBO could embed an ACR code in “Game of Thrones” that indicates when a Targaryen Three-headed Dragon Pin for which it sells a replica is onscreen, and that can trigger the TV SideView app of a consumer watching “Game of Thrones” to display the product, information on the product and a Buy button, with quick checkout via a PIN for ShopTV customers who have stored payment and shipping information. Similarly, a retailer could run a ShopTV/TV SideView promotion that is displayed in TV SideView when the retailer’s commercial appears on TV.

“Shopping on TV, you go through and enter all your information using a TV remote control, but that is so painful with a remote,” Fitzsimmons says. “The vast majority of mobile device users use their devices while they watch TV. A wirelessly tethered relationship between smartphone and smart TV is where TV commerce is headed. Using a smartphone or tablet to synchronously engage with what is onscreen. And ACR handshaking is central to that.”

Sony concurs, and also gets a cut of sales made through the TV SideView/ShopTV partnership. Fitzsimmons says mobile device and smart TV manufacturers as well as TV content providers all are looking for new incremental revenue streams, new ways to further monetize content and devices.

“Our TV SideView app already enables us to provide TV watchers with more dynamic second screen viewing and social interactivity with the TV,” says Makoto Ishii, general manager, multi screen UX service department, at Sony. “By partnering with Delivery Agent we can now include a shopping element through the second screen TV watching experience. This is the next level of consumer engagement.”

Delivery Agent began operations in 2005, working with NBC to sell products seen on popular gay-themed television shows “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Today it is actively courting the top 100 merchants in the 2014 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, Fitzsimmons says, to help them take advantage of TV.

“We did a partnership with H&M,” he says of the No. 84 merchant in the 2014 Internet Retailer Europe 500. “We did that through a Super Bowl campaign, a 30-second ad where the consumer clicks on their remote control to buy David Beckham underwear.”

Follow Bill Siwicki, editor of the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 and managing editor, mobile commerce, at Internet Retailer, at @IRmcommerce.

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