• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 2, 2015

XpressBuy created an advertising platform and business model that allows AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint to earn billions in supplemental revenue.

The platform enables retailers to sell products from search results through online advertisements, mobile or desktop, in just a few steps without having to click through to the retail site.

It became available Tuesday.

On a mobile phone, carriers have an opportunity to drive ecommerce, said Murali Subbarao, XpressBuy founder and president. While he declined to elaborate on the compensation terms of the agreement, the deal clearly shows the direction telecommunications carriers plan to take to gain a stronghold on mobile advertising.

Verizon's move made evident with the acquisition of AOL for $4.4 billion.

The commerce platform connects with about 450 retailers to provide real-time availability of the product. The company has worked with Home Depot, Best Buy, and the Oakland Radars.  

Unlike Google's YouTube Trueview Buy button, which bypasses the carriers by taking consumers directly to the retailer's Web site to complete the sale, XpressBuy processes the sale. The button aims to drive mobile commerce, rather than have consumers search and research products online and drive them into stores. Payments are processed through mobile wallets.

Here's how XpressBuy's button works. It monetizes ads based on real-time trends and in-the moment consumer data, capturing data through the purchase funnel, from the search that triggers the advertisement, to the first click on the ad through checkout process.

Consumers search for a product. The query serves up real-time availability. After making a selection, a prompt asks for a billing Zip code. The carrier information gets pulled in almost immediately by identifying the network.

A combination of identifying the carrier network and Zip code on a mobile device lets the platform pull in information provided by the telecom provider such as address, name, email, and phone number to pre-fill the fields. The consumer only needs to enter their credit card information.

Consumers running on Verizon Wireless' network only need to enter the security code, if their credit card is on file, reducing the buy time to between 30-to-45 seconds.