I believe the way networks/advertisers need to be thinking (and are starting to think) is more about how to partner with companies to do more product placement-type deals (the way Sprint did with 24 and Subway did with Chuck) where a company’s products are being incorporated (naturally!) into a show’s landscape. (As opposed to that awful New Girl episode where Jess had to take CeCe’s modeling job and sell a car for some event.) In this case, every viewing, no matter when it was viewed, counts because the product advertisement is not diminished. A simple example of how this might be done naturally: How I Met Your Mother could have made Barney obsessed with a specific brand of suit rather than all suits, in which case that brand would have been plugged constantly throughout the series–there could even have been a gag where the one time the gang actually suits up it is not the brand he likes and he makes them go change saying, “Better no suit than that suit.”
There would be, let’s say, 4 levels of product placement:
- The product appears in the show (the set background) in a single episode,
- the product is interacted with in a single episode,
- the product is discussed in a single episode, or
- combinations of these over many episodes.
Obviously the rates would vary by how many episodes, etc. (The exact formula would need some tweaking, but this is the general idea.)
If this product placement model is adopted, it would call into question many aspects of how a show is written and created. For writers, how would this type of product placement change the TV landscape? Will it become a writer’s job to figure out which company would best partner with their show? Will writers stop creating certain types of shows because it is harder to integrate products into them (i.e., period pieces and fantasies)? Would partnering with one company make mention of other brands off-limits so as not to promote a competitor? Or would the only acceptable mention of a competitor be in the form of subtly bashing them? (Presumably, writers would be concerned about creating a situation where they ruin chances of future partnerships and companies would not want to create major advertising wars, so bashing would have to be limited.)
What do you think readers? How do you think advertising needs to change in order to take advantage of delayed and binge viewing?
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