Product placement, or embedded advertising, is a type of advertisement where branded services or goods are placed in a context generally devoid of ads, such as movies, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The item placement is usually not disclosed at that time when the good or service is featured. Product placement became widespread in the 1980s.
Broadcasting & Cable reported, in April 2006, "Two thirds of advertisers utilize 'branded entertainment'-product placement-with near about (80%) in programming of TV commercial." The story, based on a survey through the Association of National Advertisers, states "Reasons for implementing in-show plugs diverse from 'stronger emotional connection' to higher dovetailing with relevant content, to targeting a specific group."
Product placement goes back to the nineteenth century in publishing. When Jules Verne published the adventure novel ‘Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)’, he would be a internationally renowned literary giant to the extent transport and shipping companies lobbied to be mentioned in the story since it was published in serial form; if however he was actually paid to do so remains unknown. Product placement continues to be utilized in books to some extent, specifically in novels. Recent scholarship in film and media studies has drawn attention to the fact that such placement would be a frequent feature of many of the earliest actualities and cinematic attractions that characterized the first 10 years of cinema history.
As with every advertisement, its efficiency tends to be assumed as advertisers carry on using product placement like an advertising strategy. However, some consumer groups for example Commercial Alert object to the practice as "an affront to basic honesty". They claim that it is too typical in today's civilization. Commercial Alert asks for full disclosure of entire product-placement arrangements, argues that many product placements are deceiving and not visibly disclosed. It advocates notice before and between TV programs through embedded advertisements. One justification for this is to permit better parental control for kids, whom it claims are easily influenced by product placements.
The Writers Guild of America, an business union represents authors of TVscripts, have raised protests in 2005 that it is members are strained to write advertisement copy veiled as story on the ground that "the result is that tens of millions of viewers are sometimes being sold products without their knowledge, bought from opaque, subliminal ways and sold in violation of government regulations."
