• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, November 7, 2006

Branded entertainment is growing north of the border. A top producer of French-language content in Canada has inked a deal with a U.S. company to provide technology that attaches a value to product placement.

TVA, which distributes French-language programming in multiple genres, has signed an agreement with iTVX to use its product-placement evaluation service. TVA will employ iTVX's so-called "paid-on-performance" model, in which a marketer only pays for product placement that appears on screen. iTVX refers to this as a results-based model.

Frank Zazza, CEO of iTVX, said the deal will allow TVA to boost product-placement revenues. In the past, the programmer had essentially tossed the placements into broader deals as "added value."