• by Wayne Friedman , June 10, 2008

NBC Universal has hired NextMedium, a product-placement agency, to help the media company fulfill its branded entertainment and product placement needs. The first assignment is to find partners for the second-year NBC network show, "Life" and the USA Network show, "Psych."

NextMedium will be using its Embed technology system, which is a first-of-its-kind online product-placement system that helps connect clients with product-placement opportunities during the production phase of TV shows.

The product-placement company not only matches brands to TV shows, but music videos and movies. The company has reportedly signed up 120 TV productions. More than 250 advertisers are members of the NextMedium ad network.

In addition, NBC Universal is using the company's Embed platform to help measure the performance of their product placements against their intended branding objectives.

Embed tracks how long a product appears on screen, whether it is in the background or foreground and mentioned in dialogue. Then using TV viewing data by Nielsen Media Research, the system takes into account how many viewers are watching. From that, it assigns a dollar value for the product placement deal.

It costs $25,000 a year for an advertiser to be an Embed member. NextMedium takes a percentage of the price an advertiser pays for a product placement.