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Research booming on product placement in television shows

television She doesn't mind watching Ellen and  Lost. She hates the days she has to sit through American ChopperUnfortunately, she can't fast-forward.Ms. Martin's job is to count when brand names such as Coca-Cola orCadillac or Yamaha appear in TV shows – on a soda can,whizzing past in a street scene, flashing on a billboard in thebackground, anywhere within the camera's range. She works forresearch company Nielsen, which provides the information toadvertisers who want to keep tabs on where competitors' productsare popping up in TV shows.

They are popping up quite a bit these days: Ms. Martin said whenshe started her job a year and a half ago, she would count anaverage of 10 brands in a prime-time network show. Now, it's closerto 50.

Viewers of the logo-laden American Chopper on Discovery Channel might be exposed to brands as many as 1,000times a show."I used to watch TV all the time," she said. "Now Igo home and do other things."Ms. Martin is part of a small army of people employed by researchcompanies and advertisers to track product placement, one of thefastest- growing segments of the advertising industry. Advertisersspent $2.9 billion in 2007 to place their products in TV shows andmovies, up 33.7 percent from the year before, according to mediaresearch outfit PQ Media.

Companies for a long time have been measuring the frequency oftraditional print and broadcast advertising. As a result,advertisers know who is spending what and where.

Some monitors, such as the Federal Communications Commission, areconcerned that it is too difficult to discern when productplacements occur. In June, the FCC said it would consider new rulesto better inform viewers when brands appear on shows in exchangefor money. Such disclosures run during the credits, but the agencyplans to examine whether product placement notices should bewritten in bigger print and displayed for a longer period.

Advertisers, on the other hand, are eager to know whether theirmoney to plug their products is being well spent.

In April, Nielsen spent $225 million to acquire IAG Research, oneof the biggest companies to measure the effectiveness ofadvertising and product placement. Nielsen is figuring out ways tocombine parts of IAG with Nielsen Product Placement Service, thedivision that employs Ms. Martin and about 15 other"coders" to count when products appear in shows. IAG saysthat when combined with Nielsen, it will provide the firstcomprehensive service for tracking product placement.

IAG comes up with its product placement ratings by asking 2.5million people to fill out surveys online after watching theirfavorite shows, said co-chief executive Alan Gould. Others aretrying different approaches to measure the effectiveness of brandplacement. Frank Zazza, the product promoter who was responsiblefor promoting the placing of Reese's Pieces in

E.T. and putting Junior Mints in Kramer's hands on

Seinfeld, now runs a company called iTVX that seeks to measure viewerrecall of product placement.

As advertisers and producers become more sophisticated at seedingproducts into programming, "it becomes more complicated tomeasure," Mr. Zazza said.

Most advertising and media buying agencies have their own ways tomeasure the success of product placements, but few are willing todiscuss their methodology.

That means it might take a long time for companies to adoptstandards set by Nielsen – or by anyone else, for thatmatter. If advertisers adopt a standard of measurement for productplacement, then they would lose their ability to negotiate whatthey pay, said Devery Holmes, president of product placementcompany NMA Entertainment & Marketing.