We aimed to determine the frequency with which kid influencers promote branded and unbranded food and drinks during their YouTube videos and assess the nutritional quality of food and drinks shown.
...Researchers used Socialbakers data to identify the 5 most-watched kid influencers (ages 3 to 14 years) on YouTube in 2019. We searched for 50 of their most-watched videos and 50 of their videos that featured food and/or drinks on the thumbnail image of the video. We coded whether kid influencers consumed or played with food or toys, quantified the number of minutes food and/or drinks appeared, and recorded names of branded food and/or drinks. We assessed the nutritional quality of foods using the Nutrient Profile Model and identified the number of drinks with added sugar.
A sample of 418 YouTube videos met the search criteria, and 179 of those videos featured food and/or drinks. Food and/or drinks were featured in those videos 291 times. Kid influencers' YouTube videos were collectively viewed >48 billion times, and videos featuring food and/or drinks were viewed 1 billion times. Most food and/or drinks were unhealthy branded items (
= 263; 90.34%; eg, McDonald's), followed by unhealthy unbranded items (
= 12; 4.1%; eg, hot dogs), healthy unbranded items (
= 9; 3.1%; eg, fruit), and healthy branded items (
= 7; 2.4%; eg, Yoplait yogurt).
Kid influencers generate millions of impressions for unhealthy food and drink brands through product placement. The Federal Trade Commission should strengthen regulations regarding product placement on YouTube videos featuring young children.
This study investigates how different formats of brand placement disclosures influence brand recall and brand attitude in music videos. Four formats of disclosures presenting different visual ...characteristics (textual and pictorial vs textual only) and auditory features (brand melody vs silent) are tested. The research adopts a multimethod approach combining eye-tracking, electrodermal activity, and self-reports. Results show that disclosures including higher visual information content positively influence the awareness of embedded advertising in music videos and the attention paid to the disclosure. Brand melodies prove to be effective to increase attention to the disclosure only when paired with textual and pictorial disclosures. Further empirical evidence demonstrates the positive indirect effect of disclosures on brand recall and brand attitude. Brand placement disclosures are shown to function as primes that can enhance brand attitudes and recall. Implications for marketing communication managers and policymakers in terms of advertising fees, contractual requirements, disclosures' design, and policy recommendations are discussed.
Advertisers are increasing their spending on product placements in TV programs, often with other integrated marketing communications (IMC) elements. This study uses 12 versions of an informational TV ...program to investigate whether too much product placement in the presence of IMC elements has a negative effect on TV program evaluation. The research reveals that combining placement and IMC presence has interactive, not additive, effects on brand recognition and recall, persuasion knowledge, and program evaluations. IMC elements, particularly a billboard seen before a product placement, have a "hedonic contamination" effect, worsening evaluation of an informational TV program featuring blatant product placement.
This research tests a model of the effects of personalized product placements on consumer preference, both for the embedded brand and the digital entertainment product in which that brand is ...embedded. The latter has yet to be examined in the traditional product placements literature. The results of two studies conducted in the domain of eBooks are presented. Evidence suggests that when pre-existing rankings of brands were systematically collected and used to design personalized product embeds, participants were willing to pay more for the eBook when it contained a favourably (vs. unfavourably) ranked brand, but only when the brand embed was subtle (as opposed to obvious). Study 2 also finds that personalized product placements enhanced consumers' recall of, and probability of choosing the embedded brand. Results suggest that both the digital entertainment product and the embedded brand can benefit from the strategic use of personalized product placements.
Este trabajo es una investigación sobre el uso de la herramienta del emplazamiento de producto inverso en el contexto de la comunicación comercial española a través de un caso histórico y ...paradigmático que fue pionero en el área y se convirtió en precursor de una nueva tendencia comunicativa contemporánea de éxito. Se trata de una exploración sobre la aplicación de una técnica que sirvió como vehículo para construir el discurso prototípico. Hablamos del caso sucedido con la marca Limón & Nada de Coca-Cola. Hemos empleado una metodología exploratorio- descriptiva dividida en fases. Primero se ha realizado un análisis bibliográfico sobre esta práctica. Seguidamente, se ha entrevistado a la creativa Ángela Pacheco que aporta una visión pragmática sobre el proceso. Finalmente, se efectúa un análisis cualitativo cruzando los datos de las fases previas. Como resultado alcanzamos un estudio que detecta las dimensiones comunicativas relacionadas con esta técnica pionera dentro de nuestro contexto histórico.
•Product placement in music videos is a growing promotional strategy.•This experiment exposed participants to e-cigarette product placement.•E-cigarette product placement in music videos impacted ...e-cigarette susceptibility.•Young adults who have never used e-cigarettes may be vulnerable to these promotions.
Product placement in music videos is a growing promotional strategy. This study examined the impact of e-cigarette product placement and imagery in music videos on susceptibility to use e-cigarettes among young adults.
A non-probability sample of young adults (18 to 24) in Southern California were recruited to participate in an experiment over Zoom. Participants were randomized into a treatment or a control group. The treatment group watched seven music videos with e-cigarette product placement and imagery. The control group watched the same seven music videos with all e-cigarette product placement and imagery digitally removed. Participants completed a questionnaire after watching the music videos. The focus of the analysis was on susceptibility to use e-cigarettes in the future among never users (n = 303).
Participants in the treatment group who had never used e-cigarettes were more likely to report intentions to try e-cigarettes in the future (OR = 1.94, 95% CI 1.08, 3.54, compared to participants in the control group. Participants in the treatment group who had never used e-cigarettes were more likely to report peer influence (OR = 1.97, 95% CI 1.19, 3.32, compared to participants in the control group. While these subitems of susceptibility to use e-cigarettes were statistically significant, the relationship between the treatment group and the composite measure of susceptibility was not.
Exposure to e-cigarette product placement in music videos may increase young adults’ intentions to try e-cigarettes in the future. Federal, state, and local tobacco control regulatory bodies should consider strategies to reduce e-cigarette product placement in music videos.
Research on product placement, the integration of brands/products within entertainment content, has flourished over the past three decades, culminating in several review articles. This article ...conceptualizes product placement as a commercial intertext to enable the development of novel research questions that account for the interconnections of the placement and a web of intertextual connections. Contextualizing product placement as a message within a system of sociocultural, marketing communications, and textual cross-references opens new opportunities for research that extend beyond the well-documented executional characteristics of the placement. Illustrative research questions are proposed.
Expenditure on product placement has grown faster (170%) than on advertising (15%) over the past 10 years, but some evidence suggests that the return on investment has been declining. For the ...well-known, fast-moving consumer goods/consumer-packaged goods (FMCG/CPG) food brands typically placed in local TV programming—the context of this article—the management problem of overfocusing on brand exposure hinders gaining brand choice, the ultimate strategic goal of marketing. Managers’ preconditioning, ease of measuring, and assumptions about the value of exposure contribute to their subtle placements becoming blatant or in other problems, as when other promotional devices, like a television commercial or program sponsorships billboard, get bundled into the same TV episode as the company’s own product placement. The higher brand exposure gained can evoke negative mental outcomes in consumers, weakening influences on brand choice. An experiment with a large sample of grocery shoppers supports such an outcome. More strategic value can also be gained from product placements in general by their use longitudinally, in-between campaigns of TV commercials, as an instructive tool and through normalizing a brand’s role in a consumer’s life. We provide eight checkpoints for marketers to consider when planning to use product placement to gain value for their brands.
•Comprehensive meta-analytical synthesis of brand placement effectiveness.•Placements have strong positive effects on brand placement memory.•Placements have small-modest effects on salience, ...attitude, and conation.•Plot connection can strengthen affective and conative effects.•Prominent placements enhance memory of placement but not persuasion.•Disclosure enhances memory of placement itself with no other effects.
Although brand placements are commonplace in promotion strategies, the extant literature lacks a quantitative empirical synthesis of the effect of placements on cognitive, attitudinal, and conative outcomes. The authors report a meta-analysis addressing the extent to which brand placements affect consumers’ brand placement memory, brand salience, consumer attitude toward the placed brand, and purchase intentions or choice. Four hierarchical meta-regression models explore contexts and executional characteristics that contribute to relatively stronger or weaker brand placement effects. Overall, findings suggest strong, positive placement effects on brand placement memory and small or modest, positive placement effects on brand salience, attitude, and conation. Among the factors potentially moderating these effects, brand-plot connection emerges as a key executional characteristic associated with stronger (more positive) cognitive, attitudinal, and conative effects for plot-connected relative to unconnected placements. Moreover, prominent placements enhance brand placement memory effects while not evidencing any significant backlash on persuasive effects. The same pattern emerges for placement disclosure. The findings have significant implications for marketing managers and public policy makers and provide important directions for further research.
This study comprehensively reviews the literature on product placements to develop an integrative conceptual model that captures how such messages generate audience outcomes. The model depicts four ...components: execution/stimulus factors (e.g., program type, execution flexibility, opportunity to process, placement modality, placement priming); individual-specific factors (e.g., brand familiarity, judgment of placement fit, attitudes toward placements, involvement/connectedness with program); processing depth (degree of conscious processing); and message outcomes that reflect placement effectiveness. The execution and individual factors influence processing depth (portrayed as a high-low continuum), which in turn impacts message outcomes. The outcomes are organized around the hierarchy-of-effects model into three broad categories: cognition (e.g., memory-related measures such as recognition and recall); affect (e.g., attitudes); and conation (e.g., purchase intention, purchase behavior). This study integrates potential main and interaction effects among model variables to advance a series of theoretical propositions. It also offers an extensive research agenda of conceptual and empirical issues that future work can address.