• by Paul Gough , March 8, 2004

A pioneer in the still nascent field of TV program product placement is taking the practice back to school in an effort to learn how, when, where, and why consumers are impacted by the integration of products and brands with TV programming. The University of Texas at Austin has become the first in what is expected to be a group of several leading academic institutions that will join the International Product Placement Research Council (IPPRC), an ad hoc think tank being organized by researcher iTVX.

UT's Department of Advertising offers the nation's only doctorate in advertising.

Frank Zazza, founder of iTVX, said the IPPRC is intended to help the burgeoning field of product placement catch up with other Madison Avenue disciplines that have had years of research vetting to establish themselves.

Zazza's has spent the past several years developing and marketing iTVX's showcase, a Windows-based system that measures the return on investment that puts a price on product placements that run within television programs. The company has signed a number of clients, including Deutsch, CBS, Unilever and other marketers.

For the University of Texas, the alliance gives researchers access to real-world data on product placement being done by agencies, advertisers, and networks.

"Typically, it has been very hard for academic researchers to get a hold of that data, which is industry specific," said Isabella Cunningham, chair of the University of Texas Department of Advertising. "That's why we think this relationship is very interesting to us--because we're trying to teach and graduate tomorrow's industry leaders. We can do it better if we provide better tools."

Zazza said he's pleased that academic researchers are embracing the idea.

The research council may grow soon, too, with dozens of inquiries from colleges and universities in the United States and throughout the world.

"Students going into the field are going to have to get involved in what is going to be three or four years from now," Zazza said. "Unless they're taught this, by the time they graduate they'll have learned about the dinosaurs, how the 30-second spot was bought, how traditional advertising was done. They're going to be blowing the dust off of books that were written when there were three traditional networks."