Interactive TV commercials? They’ve been tried several times, beginning with the QUBE cable TV experiment by Warner Cable in Columbus OH back in 1977. That one invented pay-per-view programming, special interest cable channels MTV and Nickelodeon, and oh yes, infomercials.

A new deal between TiVo and Amazon.com wants to push the envelope in combining marketing and TV viewing. Product Purchase, as it’s being called, will let users of the latest versions of TiVo’s recording device use their remote controls to link directly to Amazon.com, learn more about the item they’re seeing in a program, and buy it directly, without turning away from the TV screen.

The new pilot feature works because the newer generations of those TiVo set-top boxes are connected to the Internet, in order to download programming schedules and software or service upgrades. Under Product Purchase, TiVo viewers of certain programs—“The Daily Show”, or the talk shows of Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and David Letterman—will see a small purchase alert pop up when an available product (predominantly books, CDs or DVDs) is mentioned.

Using a button on their remotes, those viewers can simply move the purchase into the shopping cart of their Amazon account (assuming they’ve set one up already.) Or they can switch to the Amazon product page, read more about the item, and then go back and pick up the rest of the show, which TiVo has of course been recording while they were off buying.

It’s an interesting rapprochement between TiVo and marketers, who have long been worried that giving viewers the ability to time-shift programs was quickly eroding the value of TV advertising. While Product Purchase won’t do much to rebuild the status of the 30-second spot, it may just enable a new way to promote products on TV: through organic placement within shows rather than via intrusive commercials.

“TV has historically been good at showing you things, often with the intent to purchase, but never going that last mile to say, ‘Okay, let’s complete the purchase now,’” says Evan Young, director of broadband services for TiVo. “This completes that loop and lets you buy without taking you out of the viewing experience.”

It’s a convenience for viewers, at least in regard to low-consideration “impulse” purchases such as books and music. But Young also suggests that Product Purchase could do TV marketers a favor by giving them a way to measure the impact of their broadcast marketing—including ads, assuming TiVo viewers don’t just skip past them.

“Television advertising has traditionally been impression-based,” he says. “You put a commercial on TV, but all you can do is count the number of impressions that you get. Now, folks who have TiVos can make the purchase right away, and can go from the impulse to checkout using their remote controls. That gives a level of measurability to the campaign that really didn’t exist before.”

TiVo viewers in themselves won’t constitute a large enough audience to merit special attention from advertisers; the service is in only about four million homes in the U.S., and some portion of even those don’t have the set-top models that will accommodate the Product Purchase service.

But TiVo is trying to move away from selling a subscription service to become a platform company, and there is a chance that it might sign licensing deals to get its software into the DVRs being leased by big cable providers such as Comcast and Cox.

What really differentiates this effort from earlier attempts to link TV and shopping? Those pioneers include QUBE, but also Respond TV and the “smart e-commercial” technology from Wink Communications which garnered some interest from brands like Procter & Gamble, Charles Schwab and The Clorox Company. All are defunct now.

The difference, Young says, is in the players and their brand equity among users.

“Ultimately, the consumer has to be comfortable with the proposition that’s in front of them and who they’re transacting with,” he points out. “People who have TiVo love it. The user interface is very intuitive, and it’s very easy to understand what’s going on. And then we’re working with Amazon, which has a sterling reputation for customer service. They have the world’s largest selection of products, and people expect their pricing to be at least competitive if not the lowest available.”

TiVo has in fact already been working with Amazon.com on another project that got Amazon’s Unbox video service onto the same set-tops that now offer Product Purchase. “For a year and a half TiVo customers have been buying movies and TV shows from Amazon for direct download to their TiVos,” says Young. “We’ve proven that trust model by showing that people will buy content from a reputable partner such as Amazon. Physical commerce is just a logical extension.”