• NY Times, Wednesday, January 4, 2006 10:45 AM

The latest wrinkle in product placement does not require that the actual product be physically placed anywhere at all. It needn't be brought to a TV soundstage, a movie set, or a post-production house. Instead, the particular product can be specified in a contract, and digital magicians can then insert it into a scene. The work can be so seamless that few if any viewers will ever notice that that box of corn flakes, say, was placed on the kitchen table in a sitcom situation through the skills of a guy with cool software in his computer. Writes Sam Lubell of The New York Times: With "the explosion of new formats like DVD, video-on-demand and online video in the last few years, digital placement gives advertisers and producers the option of cutting multiple deals with advertisers, placing one brand of soda in a first-run movie, selling placement for another brand in that movie's DVD release and a third in the portable video player version."

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