Storybids Takes Product Placement to the Indie Producer

The fun to say Zibb.com has a post about the recently launched Storybids:

“Storybids, Inc. is a venture capital funded start up based in Irvine, CA focusing on in-video advertisement via product placement in user generated content as well as professionally scripted webisodes. Storybids offers a new way to monetize video by inserting actual product, services or verbal mentions pre-production before a video goes viral. The videos uploaded via content creators may be uploaded to multiple video hosting sites at once and then tracked via analytics for performance via their dashboard. Advertisers may select video content creators in the marketplace via a search tool that tracks views, comments and ratings across multiple video hosting sites.”

I’ve poked around the site but haven’t taken a deep look just yet (read: don’t feel up to registering for anything at the moment…).  Over the weekend I think I’ll try submitting a project and then I’ll report back with the results.

According to the rather hybolic verbage on the site I’m pretty certain I will be writing that post from the Yacht I buy with the millions of dollars they’re going to help me make.

KateModern Gets a Lift from Toyota

KateModern, a spinoff of LonelyGirl15, has just lined up Toyota for some sponsorship/product placement.

“Bebo’s leading online drama KateModern which averages 1.5 million views per week, will be filming 7 episodes in 3 cities featuring a special brand integration with Aygo Platinum by Toyota.

Next week, fans of the show will be able to come and witness KateModern being filmed as a piece of live street theatre in locations across the UK. These special episodes will be aided by Toyota, who are providing the wheels to take the cast and crew to Manchester on the 19th February, Edinburgh on the 20th, and Leeds on the 21st. The Aygo will also be featured in next week’s story which will air on Bebo from Monday February 25th for seven days.*”

You can read the whole press release here.

This isn’t huge news but it will be interesting to see how this integration is carried out – whether or not it will strike a viable balance between promotion and entertainment.

Project Runway the Placement Champ

Over on NewTeeVee, there is a very thorough accounting of every single product placement, mention and inference that occurred in last weeks Project Runway.  I’ll let you check out the post for the details but the final tally is 106 occurrences at an average rate of 2.5/minute.

Now, at first glance one might say, “Dear lord, this is disgusting! How much can one person take!”  Well, it turns out that if the show itself is actually compelling and entertaining, we can take that and probably a whole lot more.  Project Runway has been critically quite well received (you can search for reviews yourself, I’m not google) and has had a steady, dedicated audience over many seasons.

I would argue that viewers are constantly doing a relatively subconscious mental calculation in which they are analyzing the entertainment-to-shilling ratio of the program they are watching.  As long as the entertainment is “good” enough we accept the product placement, even when it is as blatant (and, at times, not so blatant) as it is on PR.  It is only when viewers sense that they are getting more “sell” than actual entertainment that various backlashes occur.

And as we all know, the internet loves a backlash.