Recently, some televised sporting events have started using a system that makes billboards in stadiums appear to have advertisements that they don’t actually have. The process is somewhat like a digital version of Chrome Key, but it is much more powerful. In the years to come, this technology will become even more powerful and also considerably cheaper, opening up new opportunities for Internet advertisers and raising a number of interesting questions in the process.
While streaming media is subject to regulations requiring a clear separation between content and advertising, such restrictions do not apply to Internet-based media. Also, only a handful of movies, such as Citizen Kane, have contractual protection against any kind of subsequent modification of the content. As a result, Internet advertisers will be able to integrate their product into programming to a degree not possible since the golden age of radio.
It may be limited to billboards now, but in a few years new digital video technology will be able to seamlessly replace any product an actor uses in a movie or TV episode, including items worn or worn, even if the actor is moving. Given the revenue potential, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood starts making movies designed to support digital post-production product placement or virtual product placement. For example, the actors can simply drink soda from a solid-colored can, making it a simple process to overdub the image of a Coke or Pepsi can later. Using this technology, it will be possible to sell product placement permanently, or only for a specific time or regional market. It might look like the actors are drinking Coca-Cola in a movie when it’s being watched in Florida, but it might look like they’re drinking Pepsi to people watching the same movie in California.
Internet-based media will offer even more opportunities for advertisers than the theater. Since the movies distributed on the Internet will already be in digital format, it will be relatively easy to insert digital tags into them to indicate where to insert the advertiser’s products. For example, a scene at a party might show six people drinking six different cans of soda. Using a process somewhat similar to that used for film coloring, the film owner or distributor can digitally label each of six different cans so that any or all of the cans can be offered for product placement. This digital tag would be a few lines of text indicating where to place the product image, its spatial orientation and size, added to each frame in which a product was to appear. Like a layer in Photoshop, the label can be easily edited or removed as needed. Advertisers will only need to provide a webcaster with a 3D image file of their packaging, in this case a 3D image of a soda can. The software that the Webcaster will use will do the actual work of inserting the product image into each scene as needed, on the fly.
The process of adding tags to enable product placement could be done during film production or at any time afterward. Eventually, Hollywood’s vast library, from silent movies to current movies, will be tagged and available for product placement. Of course, certain period pieces like Gladiator or Star Wars will offer little to no opportunity for product placement, but most movies will offer opportunities, and many of them excellent.
It’s interesting to consider how many digital merchandise placements could be tastefully inserted into the movie classic Casablanca. Vintage Coca-Cola advertisements, in the local language, hanging on the walls may not seem out of place. Neither are the modern brands of liquor behind the bar, or the modern brands of cigarettes. Painting a TWA logo on the passenger plane that Ingrid Bergman departs from at the end of the movie could also work (although a Pan American logo might have been even better).
It is also interesting to consider the less tasteful product inserts in Casablanca. In fact, the lengths to which this technology could be taken—in terms of fundamentally changing a film’s mood, period authenticity, even color balance and composition—are enough to give directors nightmares, actors and critics. It is not certain whether these groups will have much say in the practice of product placement, but they will raise issues that advertisers need to be able to respond to.
Digital product placement will also raise other issues. For example, who decides to insert digital product placements into movies that are distributed on the Internet? Who gets the royalties? Since no law prohibits the digital replacement of products already in the movies, could Coca-Cola pay to have Pepsi cans magically replaced with Coke cans in movies distributed over the Internet? If Pepsi hadn’t paid for the placement in the first place, would they have any legal recourse to be replaced? What if Pepsi had originally paid for the placement?
As with any revolutionary technology, opportunities appear long before customs and laws have evolved to resolve the inevitable conflicts new technology creates. Virtual product placement is already available in a primitive form, and it won’t be long before it’s common practice for advertisers who would never consider it today. It’s going to be a great new tool, but advertisers who are tempted to abuse it should consider that it’s only a temporary advantage. Eventually, this technology will be priced as a commodity, and it will be just as easy for consumers to replace and filter out products they don’t want to see. It is a virtual certainty.
From Advertising & Marketing Review, August 2000.
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