It’s no secret mobile devices and social media have changed con­sumers’ TV habits and opened oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters. Some retail­ers and net­works have flirt­ed with cam­paigns that allow con­sumers to buy prod­ucts direct­ly from their TVs, and yet the so-called t‑commerce indus­try remains unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry or, at the very least, has yet to take off in a mean­ing­ful way. Pan­elists at Adver­tis­ing Week who were involved in some of these pre­vi­ous efforts said there still isn’t a seam­less path, but not­ed their t‑commerce expo­sure to date has made for good learn­ing expe­ri­ences.

It’s a feel­ing many con­sumers can relate to: They’re watch­ing their favorite TV shows and sud­den­ly see a must-have prod­uct. In this day and age, if they’re ready and will­ing to buy, they should be able to. Net­works and brands are cer­tain­ly aware of the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Accord­ing to Jill Toscano, vice pres­i­dent of U.S. media at Amer­i­can Express, 9 out of 10 con­sumers watch TV with oth­er screens on hand. “If you think about ‘Friends’ years ago and Rachel’s hair – that was the old school days when you had to talk on the phone,” she said. “Now we’re tweet­ing about it.” Sim­i­lar­ly, if Jen­nifer Anis­ton wore a cute dress on the show, it was unlike­ly con­sumers would be able to find it for them­selves with­out a whole lot of luck. TV today has a whole new crop of fash­ion­able stars like Zooey Deschanel of “New Girl” and Mindy Kaling of “The Mindy Project”.

Accord­ing to Toscano, these women also wear very desir­able dress­es that con­sumers would love to buy, which means there’s still a real con­sumer need no one has solved. Some play­ers have tak­en steps, “yet to be enabling of that com­merce behav­ior at scale, that’s a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty and a huge fron­tier we’re explor­ing and no one has plant­ed a flag,” Toscano said. That’s not to say no one has tried. In 2012, Amer­i­can Express announced a num­ber of media part­ner­ships, which it said were designed to “cre­ate seam­less and engag­ing shop­ping expe­ri­ences for con­sumers that in turn curat­ed con­tent into com­merce.” This includ­ed a part­ner­ship with Fox Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny that allowed con­sumers to shop for fash­ion and house­hold items seen on shows like “New Girl” via the Fox Now apps, as well as a part­ner­ship with NBCU­ni­ver­sal, which sim­i­lar­ly enabled con­sumers to pur­chase prod­ucts “inspired by” shows, includ­ing Bravo’s “Life After Top Chef”, E!‘s “Fash­ion Police”, and Style’s “Tia & Tam­era”.

The lat­ter prod­ucts were curat­ed by NBCU­ni­ver­sal’s women’s dig­i­tal brand Dai­ly Can­dy and pow­ered by zee­box, a com­pan­ion TV view­ing plat­form for iOS and Android devices. “As a con­tent com­pa­ny, we have to think about ways to evolve engage­ment with con­sumers and [to find] anoth­er con­duit to engag­ing con­sumers in a new way,” said Shari Cohen, exec­u­tive direc­tor at adver­tis­ing media com­pa­ny GroupM, of the zee­box part­ner­ship. “We have to indulge them beyond con­tent and cre­ate new lev­els of rela­tion­ships. We learned so much by doing it.” Toscano described these part­ner­ships and Amer­i­can Express’ first move into the advanced TV space as “a labor of love.” “If we put suc­cess on sales, that’s prob­a­bly the wrong KPI,” Toscano said. “But if we [frame it in terms of] bring­ing expe­ri­ences that card mem­bers wouldn’t expect, I think it was a suc­cess.”

But they cer­tain­ly aren’t the only play­ers here. Retail­er H&M part­nered with inter­ac­tive com­merce firm Deliv­ery Agent to use the latter’s t‑commerce plat­form to shop-enable its 2014 Super Bowl ad with David Beck­ham. Con­sumers were able to use their remote con­trols to engage with the ad and opt-in to pur­chase prod­ucts. More recent­ly, Deliv­ery Agent announced a deal with online retail­er Overstock.com to allow view­ers to pur­chase prod­ucts direct­ly from tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials. In a press release, Deliv­ery Agent said insight from this so-called Over­stock­to­ber cam­paign will enable the part­ners to build a roadmap for future con­sumer-brand engage­ments via tele­vi­sion. The suc­cess of Overstock’s effort remains to be seen, but, for her part, Toscano shared her own tips about what Amer­i­can Express has learned about t‑commerce so far.

Tip 1: Price Points Matter

Prod­ucts and cost absolute­ly mat­ter when it comes to t‑commerce, Toscano said. A $400 to $600 Jason Wu dress worn by Deschanel or Kaling may be high­ly desir­able, but it’s inac­ces­si­ble to most con­sumers. And that means that no mat­ter how desir­able the dress may be, it’s not the right prod­uct for a t‑commerce pro­gram. Cohen agreed. It still isn’t clear how to take t‑commerce to the next lev­el and pick the right prod­ucts. Con­sumers will say, “‘I love that dress and need to have it,’ but they don’t know how much it costs,” she said.

But, on the plus side, her team learned that there are some prod­ucts that are impulse buys and oth­ers that require more thought, which she said she plans to apply to future iter­a­tions. “It’s a work in progress. There’s no play­book for it,” she added.

Tip 2: Keep It Simple

In order to get con­sumers to buy prod­ucts via t‑commerce, the jour­ney from desire to pur­chase must be as sim­ple as pos­si­ble. “It can­not be one that takes steps 1 to 10 or they’ll drop off,” Toscano said. “One click is always key.”

Tip 3: Think Impulse Buys

In addi­tion, Toscano said the prod­ucts that real­ly sell are the inspi­ra­tional of-the-moment prod­ucts that pop up as must haves and are “a great exam­ple of real-time mar­ket­ing.” For her part, Ali­son Tar­rant, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the client solu­tions group at NBCU­ni­ver­sal, said NBCU­ni­ver­sal will con­tin­ue to explore t‑commerce, par­tic­u­lar­ly with prop­er­ties like Fan­dan­go. “Love it, buy it, own it. It’s the right com­merce mes­sage in the right envi­ron­ment and a very quick expe­ri­ence,” Tar­rant said. “It’s find­ing those right oppor­tu­ni­ties where it’s suc­cess­ful.”