Is it an Ad or a Prop?
Posted November 25th, 2008 by Megan Tady
Is that bag of potato chips in a TV actor’s hand simply a prop, or a sneaky way to advertise? Right now, there’s no way to tell, and the public is increasingly seeing products popping up in television shows long before commercial breaks.
Product placement is the growing practice that allows advertisers to insert a product into the storyline of a show as another form of marketing. The FCC is considering whether it should strengthen its sponsorship identification rules, and last week Free Press submitted comments to the Commission asking for greater transparency when product placement – also known as embedded advertising – is being used.
Even though these practices are deceptive more companies are resorting to embedded advertising because it is an effective method of reaching customers. According to Nielsen Media Research, more than 5,100 embedded ads appeared on network TV in 2007, a 13 percent increase from the previous year. Advertisers also spent $2.9 million in product placements in TV and films in 2007, up 33.7 percent from the previous year.
Embedded advertising goes against the FCC’s established policy of transparency and is inconsistent with the Commission’s goals of ensuring that viewers are conspicuously informed of all sponsorship of the programming they watch. Viewers watching their favorite TV programs do not know when an embedded ad appears unless they watch the fine print on the closing credits at the end of each show.
Prominent Disclosure of Embedded Advertising
The Commission’s current rules are not sufficient to address the growing use of embedded ads because the media landscape has changed the techniques advertisers are using to reach consumers.
The 1934 Communications Act adopted sponsorship identification regulations in an effort to “protect the public’s right to know the identity of the sponsor when consideration has been provided in exchange for airing programming.” But these decades-old rules must be amended to reflect the need for greater transparency for current ad practices.
Embedded advertising practices cannot be examined independent of recent controversies surrounding the use of video news releases (VNRs) by the government and corporations to deceive the public. Free Press has been active in opposing the use of VNRs that do not clearly bear the disclosure of their sponsors.
Advertisers have adopted embedded advertising techniques because the ads exploit the “emotional connection” a character or a program has with a viewer. But television viewers should not be subjected to hidden and subliminal ad messages. The public has a right to know when someone is making an attempt to sell them a product.
Free Press supports the recommendations of the Writer’s Guild of America, West for simultaneous disclosure whenever an embedded ad appears in a program. The disclosure would appear on a crawl on the bottom third of the TV screen with the name of the embedded product featured in readable text. At the very least, the Commission should adopt the Commercial Alert’s recommendations that call for clear verbal and visual disclosures at the beginning of segments that an embedded ad appears, as well as at the outset and end of the program that explains “the nature of the hidden advertisement.”
Children Deserve Further Protection from Embedded Ads
Although the FCC has banned embedded advertising in children’s programming, Free Press supports strengthening the current sponsorship identification rules on kids’ shows. The Commission should codify its rules and explicitly prohibit embedded ads on all children’s programming, enforcing the ban that currently exists.
As the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has stressed, direct marketing to children is harmful and is a factor in the rise of childhood obesity as well as other health risks and social disorders.[1] One disturbing example noted by CCFC was a study that asked kids to choose between receiving a chocolate bar or a head of broccoli. It should come as no surprise that 78 percent of children selected the chocolate bar. But that figure changed once a sticker of the Sesame Street character, Elmo, was placed on the broccoli. Half of the children chose to pick the Elmo-labeled broccoli, demonstrating the effect persuasive power of advertising on children.
The Commission should also extend the ban on the use of product integration to primetime programming watched by children. Children watch family-oriented programming with their parents and siblings. Parents should not have to worry about exposing their children to insidious advertising techniques. Yet family-oriented programming contains a significant number of embedded ads. “American Idol,” referred to by the CEO of NBC Universal as “the most impactful show in the history of television,” featured more product placements than any other show on the small screen. Even if the Commission passed rules calling for simultaneous disclosure, it would not protect children who are unable to understand their meaning. The Commission must extend the embedded ad ban on children’s programming to primetime, family-oriented programming watched by children.
