Facing the realities of either shutting down or starting to figure out ways to monetize their production, creators of the populur teen soap opera Lonelygirl15 have opted to include product placement as one of the ways of doing that.
Last month the Hershey's advertising agency approached the creators of the show to see if they wanted to put Ice Breakers gum into the story as a product placement. The brand manager of the agency is a big fan of the show and initiated the contact, especially because it targeted their specific demographic as well.
"The goal was to raise awareness of the brand among our target consumers," said Kirk Saville, a spokesman for Hershey Co., which makes Ice Breakers. "It already has generated substantial interest on the LG15 site and blogs worldwide."
With advertisers craving online content to connect their products with, and smaller content providers struggling to survive, it's probably going to be a continuing trend for this to happen.
The weary and unproven argument that the fan base of a show will rebel if advertising is offered was proven wrong here, as when asked in a forum if they minded if the company went this route, 90 percent of the fans said that didn't mind at all. Online comments after the episode also showed that the majority remained in favor of the advertising.
I think the reasons the responses of the viewers contradicted what most people think is that fans probably are starting to understand that they either can have the show with some type of advertising connected to it, or they can't have the show. How long will any of this continue to go on if it's not monetized? There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Rocketboom is also struggling with similar problems, as all online video content providers will eventually be as well.
Scott Zakarin, who runs Zabberbox, a short-clip show producer that posts its creations like "NoHo Girls" and "VanNuys Guys" on YouTube (GOOG) are going to include product placement in their offerings very soon he says.
We also talked recently about former Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner getting into the online video business, which will also include product placement and the ability to purchase some of the items featured in the videos.
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