New Media and Advertising

As the internet beckons our attention more and more, with the power of piracy, file sharing and on-demand programming viewers continue to abandon their television sets finding fulfilment online instead. As the audience shifts, advertising too has made its move. So, where is all that television advertising going?

We're all aware of ads on just about every website we go to, and product placement isn't anything new either. The extent to which brands are placing themselves in films, TV-shows and just about every other media is however rapidly expanding, and in many cases getting ridiculous. It's a fine line between just enough and too much product placement.

The website Brand Channel tracks brands in films. Looking through the sites '2009 Brand Cameo Product Placement Awards' you'd be surprised at how many films were negatively affected by the extent of their product placement, such as Star Trek and Transformers, the latter even winning the 'Film Whore Award' for having sold its soul to advertising. Unsurprisingly, Apple took out the award for the brand most featured, with Ford taking a close second.

Advertising's black mark on film also continues to creep into new media online. As discussed in our lecture on Digital Capitalism, advertisers are even creating adverts that look like user-generated material and posting them on YouTube, and using viral marketing schemes through other social networking sties.

So, as our freedom grows to view whatever we like, whenever we like, advertisers are simultaneously on the move to sell us their products everywhere and anywhere!

Addition made 14/10/10: This is amusing-- apparently Apple won't take every opportunity for product placement. It seems Apple aren't fans of How I Met Your Mother, whose producers were refused permission to use Apple products, so shamelessly promoted Microsoft instead. Although I haven't seen the episode in question, it saddens me to think that product placement might have ruined an episode of one of my favourite shows.