July 13, 2008
Product Placement Creeps Into Amateurs' YouTube Offerings
According to The Washington Post, product placement and corporate sponsorships have been seeping into new, user-generated turf lately.
"Last year, Dr Pepper sponsored production of a music video by YouTube star Tay Zonday, who is Web famous for his song "Chocolate Rain."This year, Sprint Nextel is offering a few bucks to people who incorporate a new Samsung phone into a home video and post the results to YouTube. The first 1,000 videos to incorporate the Instinct phone get $20 apiece, and one grand prize-winning entry will win $10,000.
... It's easy to understand why sites like YouTube are attractive to advertisers and corporate sponsors. Getting a 30-second commercial on the air in front of a prime-time audience costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; uploading a video to YouTube costs nothing. Big-name entities from Revlon to Coldplay have recently sponsored contests on the video site. "
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