Media Updates

Product Placement

By Leslie Regan Shade
November 9, 2005

Product placement – the use of various products placed seamlessly into television, film, and videogame content, has become a ubiquitous and profitable practice in the last decade.

Recently the CRTC announced that it will pay closer attention to product placement in Canadian television shows to determine if it needs to be regulated. Current advertising rules limit broadcasters from running more than 12 minutes of advertising per hour. However, in an effort to stem the tide of consumers who no longer watch advertising, or who use technologies such as personal digital recorders to bypass advertising, the use of product placement has become more pervasive. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, an industry group representing Canadian broadcasters, is concerned that any new regulations on product placement in advertising be flexible enough to accommodate new demands of advertisers in light of technological developments. They are therefore recommending that product placement rules not follow the standard rules of television advertising.

Product placement has become integrated not just as props into media content but directly into scripts, such as making the Donald Trump reality TV show, the Apprentice, feature Burger Kind and Sony Playstations into the storyline. Corner Gas, the popular CTV show, integrated the Sears Canada Wish Book catalogue into an episode.

The newest trend of product placement is virtual product placement, wherein specific products are digitally edited into the content of programs. The advantage of this for Canadian broadcasters is that they can integrate Canadian products into popular American programming. Global TV has pioneered this technique in Canada, integrating Canadian products into shows including Will & Grace, The Apprentice and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

A recent example was from the closing scene of the 2006 season of The Apprentice, when the Ontario simulcast substituted the ad on the New York taxicab that takes away the ‘castoff’ from a Yahoo! Jobs ad to an ad for a local Orillia, Ontario Casino Rama.

Virtual product placement is a challenge that the CRTC has yet to address, but promises to elicit much controversy.

References

Will & Grace loved their Macleans. (June 22, 2006). Macleans.ca. URL: http://www.macleans.ca/culture/media/article.jsp?content=20060626_129538_129538

McArthur, Keith and Grant Robertson. (November 11, 2005). CRTC Ponders Impact of Product Placement. The Globe and Mail: B1.