For TiVo Premiere owners, a clickable "buy-now" link would appear during commercials from companies participating in PayPal's service. The program would pause the programming while the user completes the transaction, TiVo says.

Other companies are attempting to extend their digital services to the television. enabled tagging of select ads here in the United States last year, which pulls up additional information about the product or service being promoted after the commercial is tagged.

Shazam users are warming up to the idea: When ad tagging debuted in the United Kingdom last month, the first two commercials were tagged some 50,000 times.

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