Virtual product placement on the rise

Post, July, 2005 by Christine Bunish

LONDON -- With conventional product placements in movies and television booming, can virtual product placement be far behind?

"The whole product placement area is generating a lot of buzz," says Allan Jaenicke, CEO of Imagineer Systems, a London-based provider of tools for the post production industry. "The market is developing rapidly, driven by the fact that, in the US, more and more people have PVRs that enable them to skip all advertising. With the traditional :30 spot losing its value, advertisers are looking for new ways of reaching viewers.You can't skip product placement that's integrated in a film or TV program you're watching."

According to a study from Stamford, CT, market research firm PQ Media, paid product placement tallied $1 billion in 2004 with TV placements vastly outpacing film for the first time thanks to the proliferation of reality TV and niche cablenets. The total product-placement industry, including barter and gratis arrangements, hit an all-time high of $3.5 billion--a 31 percent increase while other advertising and marketing expenditures gained only a meager seven percent despite election year advertising.

The study found that product placement has become an integral part of larger marketing plans for many advertisers today. More than half of product placement is in four categories: transportation and parts; apparel and accessories; food and beverages; and travel and leisure. Virtual product placement, which tracks branding and objects into existing content, offers the potential for a huge revenue stream to content owners and syndicators.

To make virtual product placement a reality, however, requires tools up for the job. Jaenicke believes Imagineer's Monet tracking and compositing software is ready for the challenge. Developed originally to work with Cinesite on the animated portraits in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Monet is now tapped by commercial post facilities for challenging tracking and compositing jobs. "We see a market for Monet in virtual product placement because it offers a cost effective way to do very accurate and very realistic product placement," Jaenicke says.

Imagineer recently did a test for a University of Michigan researcher in which Monet performed virtual product placement in a 21-minute episode of the sitcom, Arrested Development. "We tracked the Chiquita brand logo onto the family's banana stand, shirts and the refrigerator in the kitchen," Jaenicke reports.

He acknowledges that virtual product placement is in its "very early stages," but says Imagineer (www.imagineersystems.com) is "looking to help set up and deliver this service. To date, the technology has been a limiting factor."