Product placement outpaces ad spending

While the value of product placement has been a tough nut for the media industry to crack, PQ Media, a marketing researcher that has put together a brief history of the practice, is putting the net worth of the overall product placement market last year at $3.46 billion - an increase of 30.5 percent over 2003. And according to its projections, that's only the beginning. PQ Media is also saying that product placement grew at a compound annual rate of 16.3 percent from 1999 to 2004. And since 1974 - when the company began tracking product placement spending--the value of product placement rose at a compound annual rate of 10.5 percent.

Both in 2004 and in the 1999-2004 period, product placement was driven primarily by a robust TV marketplace. The value of television product placements increased 46.4 percent to $1.87 billion in 2004, and grew at a compound annual rate of 21.5 percent from 1999 to 2004.

Meanwhile, in films, where product placement gained prominence in the mid-1970s, the report notes that the value of product placements rose 14.6 percent to $1.26 billion in 2004. And because of the pull of TV, product placement grew at a compound annual rate of 11.4 percent in the 1999-2004 period.

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