• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 3, 2006

Major changes in the TV business landscape took place in the later part of 2005--but not all were obvious. While major video-on-demand deals moved to the foreground, branded entertainment and product placement business stories shifted into the background.

A string of groundbreaking business stories--ABC/iTunes Music Store, CBS/Comcast, NBC/DirecTV, and NBC/iTunes--highlighted a seemingly new era of business content deals. Branded entertainment and product placement suddenly took a back seat.

While those deals are now permanent parts of the business, real entertainment innovation has come as companies attempt to discover how best to deliver entertainment through alternative and mobile distribution devices.

Product placement and product integration money will continue to flow into the hands of major reality show producers and the TV networks that air these shows. But the press may not necessarily be enamored with the story behind the next greatest product integration deal.

Interestingly, that's where Wakarusa, Ind.-based Marathon Ventures comes in. Launched by former syndication advertising sales executive David Brenner, Marathon has already struck deals with CBS, and now Fox, to "virtually" place products on the sets of dramas and comedies through special technology. The technology has been around for years--but only recently have TV producers begun to use it extensively.

The key is that these products are static, and don't need a massive production effort to be inserted into a particular episode. Actors don't interact with them; writers don't write special scripts for them.

Marathon's product placement business returns the business to its starting point, where it has existed for several years--having products simply appear so that viewers can take notice of them.

These product placement deals don't need a lot of heavy lifting--there's no need to design a major plan where products would fit in before production. It's an after-the-fact deal--which contrasts greatly with current big product integration efforts, especially in non-scripted reality shows.

With virtual product placement, advertisers can make decisions more quickly. Deals and price points can be standardized by technically inserting a product in specific positions--usually the foreground, on a table or a kitchen countertop. The best part of all: a different product could be inserted in another airing of the same episode.

Big product integration deals have their place--but much of the business of consumer products is already in the background of our lives. Many of those deals should stay that way.