New 'Stealth' TV Ads Assailed

(CBS)  New technology may change the way TV does business.

It's called virtual product placement and, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers, it can add just about anything to shows that already exist.

The value of product placement was drummed home in 1982, when the loveable space creature "ET" helped put Reese's Pieces on the map.

But now, says Bowers, the time-honored advertising tradition of putting brand-name products into scenes in movies or TV shows is being facilitated by hi-tech, bringing it to a new level.

It enables networks and producers to place products into TV scenes after those scenes are shot. The products aren't even there when filming takes place. They're added digitally.

That not only makes product placement easier, it affords those networks and producers multiple opportunities to sell that coveted space, from first-runs to reruns to DVDs of the shows. They can even swap out one brand for another at the different level.

It also enables them to reach viewers who zip past traditional commercials when watching shows on DVRs.

The increased use of product placement has consumer watchdogs up in arms. They don't like the notion that product placement can quietly send messages to viewers who don't even realize sellers are trying to get to them.

Bowers showed scenes from several shows as they were first shot, without products in them, then as they appeared after products were digitally inserted later. She called it a case of "Now you don't see it, now you do."

"Call it product placement with a twist," she suggests, "putting a product in after the show's been shot."

"We'll take a completed program," explains David Brenner, the founder of Marathon Ventures, "identify places where we can put a product, and then digitally insert it."

Brenner's company is a pioneer in the field of virtual product placement.

"Basically what happens is, we screen every frame of every episode we receive, and what we look for in those frames is places that are going to be contextually relevant for a wide variety of products," Brenner says.

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