Dawn of the Geeks

Product placement is pretty big business. One would like to think that all those annoying commercial breaks could go away if shows would just use product placement instead. But in actuality the marketing droids are really thinking “hey, instead of only the stations paying us millions for this crappy show, we could charge advertisers as well to have our characters use their crap! Done!” So now, not only do you have commericals between scenes, now you’ve got ads during them as well. I’ll tell you why product placement and no 30 second ads is never going to happen.

1. Why give up a proven fountain of cash when you can have that fountain of cash and another river feeding into it?
2. Competing companies advertise multiple times per show. I’m pretty sure the audience will be bored out of their skulls if every episode characters go eat at McDonald’s and Burger King and Subway and wherever else would have been advertised in 30 second spots that episode.
3. There are just some products that actors are not going to talk about much less demonstrate in the episode. Every show would need a manic depressive or five to keep up with all the happy pills being sold these days.

The simple fact is, not all ads make sense in all shows. The 30 second spot allows for any product to be advertised. Product placement has to work within the show or whatever and that’s just not practical. Which is unfortunate. I’d be nice to watch shows uninterrupted.

One also has to consider that cable used to be ad free. Then companies realized that people would still subscribe even if ads were being shown. When it comes to marketing it’s all about generating additional revenue streams. It’s never about replacing one revenue stream for another. Most shows now have web-sites as well that have ads and possibly even require a subscription to view “premium” content. To the consumer it can be a little much but to the marketing drones all they hear is the sweet sweet sound of “cha ching!”