Online Video Product Placement on the Rise

While online video advertising matures, online video product placement is on the rise.

Everyone agrees: Online, product placement is more effective than old-fashioned TV commercials.

“Internet content is typically very short,” said Miles Beckett, one of the creators of YouTube-hit Lonelygirl15, a show in which the episodes are typically two to three minutes long. “If you try to put an ad in the beginning or middle of an Internet movie, it destroys the viewing experience.”

Beckett and his team are rushing to incorporate newer, less obtrusive methods of advertising (and ones that, crucially, can’t be fast-forwarded through) into Lonelygirl15 and its upcoming spinoff, KateModern. One such method is ‘deep brand integration’ — a kind of super product placement in which large swaths of story line are literally designed around a product.

Other businesses have found that staying above board works just fine.

GPS Maniac, a consumer information website (www.gpsmaniac.com), paid YouTube funnyman Kevin Nalts to produce and star in a video called “What GPS Thinks.” In it, the viewer gets to eavesdrop on the female GPS unit’s inner monologue as she bemoans her bad luck with drivers. “I get this clown who never even leaves New Jersey,” she mocks. “Who needs to navigate New Jersey, for God’s sake?”

In the credits, there is an explicit thank you to GPS Maniac for its sponsorship.

According to Dana Fisher of GPS Maniac, the attention Nalts’ video received — 26,000 views to date — has been a major traffic driver to the site. GPS Maniac has been so pleased that it has hired Nalts to produce future projects.

While system-generated video ads can get lost in cross-site superdistribution, product placements do not. That’s why they’re perfect for online video. I can envision whole TV series legally floating free all over the Web, the value of their product placements actually increased by rampant piracy. Hell, with fully product-placement-supported shows, piracy rates would become positive metrics.

Don’t think that product placements will be restricted to big YouTube stars, either. Services like SponsoredReviews.com democratized product placement for bloggers; why can’t similar services rise to democratize product placement for videobloggers?

(Via Kevin Nalts.)