The American Idol judges sit with Coca-Cola cups on the table in front of them. The contestants on the new series of The Apprentice hang out in a Poggenpohl kitchen. The good guys in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation zap around in GMC Yukon vehicles.
These are the latest and most visible signs of advertisers' fight against the growing power of the television viewer: the ability to edit out the commercials. Special equipment allows viewers to watch programs without having to endure the advertisement breaks that are rife in US television.
As sales of these devices have grown -- they are expected to be in 55 million US homes by 2010 -- so companies have looked to other ways to get their products on to the small screen. Their favorite method is what was once known by the quaint term "product placement," but now goes under the somewhat more sinister title of integrated or branded entertainment.
It was reported this week that spending by US advertisers on product placement had grown from US$550 million last year to an expected US$825 million this year. The number of placements on television grew by 100 percent in the first quarter of the year, and a further 100 percent in the second quarter.
"Product placement is like crack cocaine to the networks," Variety magazine said.
The leader is The Contender, which, according to Nielsen Media Research, had 7,500 instances of product placement in the first six months of the year.
The practice is also starting to take hold in Europe. Earlier this month the BBC was accused of breaching its guidelines after it was reported that an agency had paid ?40,000 (US$70,600) to advertise products within BBC programs. Last week the EU said it would approve product placement in programs, provided certain guidelines were followed.
Product placement typically takes one of three forms: It can be the free gift of an item used, for example, for set decoration; it can take the form of a barter arrangement in which a product will be given to a program in return for a shot or placement of the firm's logo; or it can be a more straightforward financial transaction, in which a company pays to have its product included in a scene or threaded through a program.
One of the most blatant examples was seen on the Oprah Winfrey show last year, when 276 audience members found the keys to a new car under their seat. Subsequent research showed that 95 percent of Americans knew about the promotion.
But while advertisers are spending millions getting their products on television shows, there is no way of telling if the branding filters through to sales. For that reason there is no set rate for how much production companies should charge advertisers.
At the top end of the scale is Mark Burnett, the executive producer of The Apprentice and Survivor, who charges up to US$5 million to weave a product into an hour-long edition of The Apprentice. His latest creation, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, has more than 20 integration partners, including Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, General Motors and brands such as Nestle, Dell and L'Oreal.
But there is a potential downside. The Delta Faucet Co was thrilled that one of its shower fittings was to be featured on CSI: Miami. It was not so thrilled when it saw the episode: A character slips and dies after hitting her head on a Delta showerhead.
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