Product Placement on the Internet: Can it be Regulated?

Product Placement is an ethically controversial form of promotion. It is open to the charge that it is deceitful, since the promotional motive of the media content is not necessarily apparent to the viewer. On the other hand, signalling the promotional intent tends to reduce its value for brands. We've written a lot on this topic (some links below) and our new book examines current issues in the convergence era. Below, is our blog piece recently published by online news site The Conversation about the rise of the video bloggers and the attempts by the UK media regulator, Ofcom and its advertising arm, the ASA, to control their use of product placement. The question we're really posing here is this: media brands are inherently examples of branded content. Does it make sense to try to regulate the uses of brands within them?        

This article was published by UK online magazine The Conversation on November 27th 2015 as 

Why Product Placement on YouTube Can't be Regulated Like Television : click the link to read the article, or read on below... 

Names like Zoella, Caspar, Alfie Deyes, and Tanya Burrmight not trip off the tongue for the over 35s, but they are among the vloggers (video bloggers, that is) at the vanguard of radical changes in the media and advertising scene.

The typical internet business model is to build viewer traffic and then wrap advertising around it. Try to watch a popular YouTube clip and you’ll probably be forced to see a few seconds of a paid ad first. With up to six million subscribers to their channels, some vloggers can earn a very good living from conventional advertising, not to mention extending their fame to sell books and acquire TV presenting slots, as Zoella has. More controversially, they can also earn thousands of pounds each time they mention a brand in their video content.

Old issue, new medium

Until now, this has taken place with a relative lack of regulation by advertising watchdogs. But the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has now warned that vloggers need to make it clear when they are paid to promote products in their videos. Vloggers must now change the way they label their promoted videos, by putting the words “promoted” or “paid for” in the title. The ASA insists that viewers should be forewarned when seeing promoted content.

Product placement is, of course, is nothing new, but since the ASA had its digital remit extended in 2011, it has had to take a much closer look at advertising on the internet. The ASA tries to ensure that advertising and editorial content are always clearly distinguished and the distinction is a central pillar of UK advertising regulation. And, in light of the research colleagues and I have done into product placement, it can be deceptive if viewers are not aware of the commercial intent within content they are viewing or reading.

Increasingly problematic

Separating content and advertising is increasingly problematic, however, since the shift to digital media. On one hand there is the rise of “native advertising”, which makes promotional content look like editorial. Sites would argue that the content they promote is clearly labelled for readers to see, but the labelling can be so subtle it is hardly noticeable. More to the point, it is valuable to brands precisely because it is buried within ostensibly non-commercial reporting. So, the labelling might satisfy the regulator, but does it change the meaning of the content if the content looks and reads like editorial?

What is more, we can ask what difference labelling really makes. Paid-for product placement has been permitted on UK TV since 2011, and promoted content has to carry a small logo in the corner of the screen as the programme begins. But does this render the advertising transparent to the typical viewer? And does it change our sense of what we are viewing or reading, by virtue of seeing it labelled?

It isn’t easy for the ASA to police promoted content, especially on the internet. For example, many celebrities incorporate brand mentions in their Tweets, and some have been accused of breaking advertising regulations. But, does this mean that Twitterati are not allowed to mention brands spontaneously? Does the ASA need to censor all Tweets for promoted content?

Turning back to TV, the ASA now has a strict set of regulations for paid-for product placement – but UK TV has been awash with brands in scenes for 30 years, even on the BBC. Brands give their products to product placement agencies who then supply them free of charge as props to studio managers and show producers. The agencies take a fee from the brand, and the viewer gets a realistic scene.

The alarm over the start of paid-for product on UK TV in 2011 showed that many people in the UK, including regulators, were blithely unaware of this arrangement. Back in 2009, when regulator Ofcom first consulted over allowing paid-for product placement on UK TV, then Culture Secretary Andy Burnham resisted calls to allow it. But Burnham’s decision was quickly reversed by his successor.

Generational divide?

There may be a generational divide in the assumptions around promoted content. Many young consumers assume as a default position that media content typically has a promotional angle, and they enjoy spotting the ways brands try to outwit them. This is something colleagues and I found when researching product placement on UK television. Younger consumers take a buyer-beware position.

So, do they, and we, need a regulator to nanny us? Or should the regulator accept that a new generation of consumers are media literate enough to make judgements on the credibility of branded content?

Policing promoted content is a major problem for regulators. Advertisers can be slippery, and media brands are under huge pressure to monetise content without interrupting the consumers’ online experience. Labelling branded content might seem a way of applying the principle of the separation of editorial and advertising, but it may be less of a solution than it appears.

Cultural branding strategy and literary product placement

Cultural branding, the art of placing brands in consumers' cultural experience, is becoming ever more significant in an age of media convergence. The following piece, which was published this week as Literature's Long Love Affair with Product Placement in The Conversation, reflects on a shift in product placement from visual media into the written word.    

Best-selling novelist William Boyd’s decision to take a commission from Land Rover to write a short story might strike some as a sell-out of the highest order. Indeed, some publishers and writers claim to be aghast at this intrusion of a sponsor into the literary realm. But this deal shouldn’t shock anyone.

Boyd is in good company when it comes to this kind of sponsorship. In 2001, Fay Weldon took a cheque from jewellers Bulgari to write her novel The Bulgari Connection, while BMW commissioned writers to produce audio books in 2005. Ian Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwaiti Oil Company to write a book on the country and its oil industry (though it was never published because the Kuwaiti government disapproved). Artists need patrons, and patrons have priorities. It was ever thus.

AN OBVIOUS FIT

Boyd was expected to mention the product in his story The Vanishing Game in exchange for a reported six-figure fee. Like Weldon before him, he found the brand became the centrepiece of the narrative. In fact, brands can be useful literary devices for characterisation and plot development.

Ian Fleming’s later novels, for example, signalled Bond’s Scottish antecedents and sophistication with his taste for Macallan scotch and Rolex timepieces. The whisky brand even featured free of charge in the latest Bond movie Skyfall to keep a sense of authenticity in the characterisation.

Rolex fared less well, since Omega made the producers an offer they couldn’t refuse several movies ago. There is no report that Fleming used the brands in his novels for anything other than creative reasons.

Product placement might be an obvious fit with visual media, making scenes more realistic in films, TV shows and video games. Paid placements have been present in movies since the silent era, and the techniques have become increasingly transparent. Today, producers are far from coy about their brand deals in spite of the disdain of die-hard movie buffs. Recent hits such as Skyfall, Transformers and Superman havetrumpeted their placements as part of the PR hype surrounding the launch.

Brands have also maintained a vivid presence in TV since the fifties. The product placement industry in British TV has thrived for more than thirty years because of the need for verisimilitude in scenes, even before media regulator Ofcom allowed TV companies to earn fees for it in 2011. Product placement agencies provide free scene props where producers can’t sell the space in the scene. Radio and music have also been known to accept payment to include brands in scripts or lyrics.

A LONG-TIME LITERARY TRADITION

The paid-for product references in literature may be more controversial, but it is an even older tradition. Thomas Holloway, the founder of my college, is said to have asked Charles Dickens to mention Holloway’s branded medicine in Dombey and Son. It is thought that Holloway had better luck getting mentions in London stage plays of the time. Dickens, of course, did not baulk at paid commissions.

Today, many commercially successful fashion designers, musicians and actors such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, Iggy Pop, Mark Jacobs and many more see no stigma in commercial partnerships with consumer brand companies. But should successful writers be above that sort of thing?

Granted, many movie and TV scriptwriters are now used to working closely with brands to devise plot-congruent brand mentions. And, clearly, popular novelists are not above the fray. But there is a weight to the written word that lends it a different character to a visual reference. Reading is more active than seeing; and writing, perhaps, carries more weight than film.

NATIVE ADVERTISING

In fact, the authority of the written word is driving a shift in product placement into print media. Product placement is a hybrid promotional technique combining elements of celebrity endorsement, advertising, sponsorship and PR. It is in the latter guise that brands are secreting themselves into digital and print media in the form of brand blogs and “native advertising”.

Once called advertorial, this brand-sponsored editorial is composed to look “native” to the publication. In other words, it can be almost impossible to tell that it isn’t editorial. And they are often no mere puff pieces – the branding can be subtle, since the aim is to engage readers. Perhaps surprisingly, this kind of content enjoys a high degree of trust from enthusiasts of these brands, especially when it is mixed in with apparently objective comment and reporting.

Brands don’t like to tell lies because they’ll get found out. PR operates in a zone that is neither fact not fiction, but opinion, and the insertion of brands into non-advertising media content is a powerful ideological strategy normalising and valorising brands in an ostensibly neutral setting.

Novels, of course, are not editorial but creative fiction. We read them to be entertained, and if they inform us too, it’s a bonus. Brand journalism and native advertising, on the other hand, trade in the art of factual representation. They can be seen as editorial that is spliced with promotion. Perhaps, then, we should cut novelists more slack than we give to journalists when it comes to taking money from consumer brands.

Distinctions between editorial and advertising, and between creative writing and factual reporting might be unhelpful in understanding why brands want to pay to be read about. The force of the written word is an attraction for advertisers, and the media context is becoming less important as genres merge in the era of media convergence. Perhaps we should just accept that all media content is branded: it’s really just a question of degree and transparency.

The Vine Squeezes Advertising Juice Out of 6-Second Movie Clips

The advertising business is as vibrant as ever it was, but it is undergoing seismic changes. Foremost amongst these is a re-balancing of promotional budgets away from traditional mass media advertising towards digital. This reflects the sharply reduced audience reach of mass media and a heightened desire for the measurement and accountability that digital can offer. There is also another change afoot. This is a fundamental shift in thinking about the very nature of consumer persuasion, from explicit sales-oriented advertising to implicit branded media ‘content’, meaning blogs, news features, web pages, Tweets and statuses, movie clips, and anything else that can be shared on social media.    

Some digital platforms still haven’t embraced the content revolution, and they try to monetise their audiences by wrapping conventional advertising around their offer. To be fair, they’re doing pretty well at it. Facebook, for example, are making huge revenues with their programmatic advertising that delves into your posts and surfing history to mainline ads into your newsfeed. If you’re like me though, you’ll find these pretty irrelevant and not a little intrusive. YouTube, too, have woven advertising into their offer to make serious ad revenue from the huge visitor traffic to their site. Enterprising individuals can earn a slice of this revenue, if they buy in to the programmatic advertising ethos and aren’t too fussy about which ads are seen around their clips. Recently, it was reported that some ads were being shown around extremist Jihadist videos, which just goes to show that algorithms make poor brand consultants.

Conventional advertising on digital media pleases a lot of brand clients because they think they understand it and they can show a page of graphs to their main board detailing the Return On Investment (ROI) earned by each £1 of promotional budget. The thing is, most social media users hate it. What they, and we, prefer, is content, branded or not, that doesn’t disrupt our media experience. We want to be entertained, amused, informed, diverted, and brands have a role in that. What we don’t want, really, is to be sold at. 

  

At just eighteen months old, the Vine is a relative newcomer to the video-sharing genre of social media, but it seems to have found a way to turn site traffic water into advertising revenue wine with branded content. The video clips on The Vine are just 6 seconds long, but the formula has proved infectious. Some Vine stars have millions of followers, and advertisers want to reach that young audience. More to the point, Vine advertising tends to consist of content that is fun in its own right and happens to be sponsored, in contrast to YouTube which has to force viewers to watch conventional spot advertising before they can watch the video clip they really went there to watch.  

Vines have to be funny and authentic to be shared. Many young people are tired of the commercialisation of social media. Expensively produced content made by a team of professional marketing hacks lacks the authenticity of a short clip conceived for fun and filmed and edited on a smartphone. Followers like and trust the Vine stars and they accept sponsored content provided they can believe the star would really use that brand. So, the brands pay big money to top Vine stars to create a sketch around their brand. When the fans enjoy the content and share it, that’s called earned media, and the potential audience of millions rivals anything brands can get from traditional ‘bought’ media advertising spots, at a fraction of the cost. What is more, social media shares reflect sincere consumer engagement. Traditional advertising has to work very hard to penetrate the wall of cynicism or indifference with which it is usually greeted.

Authenticity on social media is pretty hard to find, and when it does emerge the few examples tend to be quickly embraced and thoroughly de-authenticised by the folks from Big Marketing and PR. Of course, we all still use our social media in spite of the clunky advertising, but the advertisers keep chasing the ideal of integrating promotion seamlessly with our media experience. They would like the brands to become as natural a part of our lives as, well, filming ourselves on smartphones. The Vine is still just outside the media Establishment, and that has appeal, but it probably won’t be for long. What will be the next source of authenticity in social media that the advertisers can turn to their ends?              

Vine https://vine.co/

BBC News story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28692871 (August 13, 2014)