Clickz.com

Today, I visited the Web site, clickz.com and read the article entitled, Technology Enable Product Placement in CGM, written by Enid Burns and published October 26, 2006. Burns' article discusses how Entertainment Media Works (EMW) plans to enable "plinking," otherwise known as product linking, in consumer-generated media CGM), such as the internet.

Plinking is the process of adding a product or service link to visible objects or images in a video. TimeShift, an advertising and Broadcast Summit at the NAB conference discussed plans for launching this plinking service. Users would freeze a single frame and define an area where the product is located, and then once tagged, the item will be clickable through the runtime of the video, and will link to an e-commerce page, so people can shop for any item of interest they see in these videos. EMW would track the SKU numbers for several products in its database to facilitate matching the tagged product to a measurable lead.

EMW plans to allow both content viewers and user communities to take existing video and add links for a piece of the revenue share. No video aggregator sites have committed to enabling plinking on their sites yet; however a spokesperson for EMW, Ashley Heather, says EMW currently is talking to a handful of these sites at the moment.

Currently, another cross-channel product placement sited called, StarStyle.com, has been developed which allows users to shop for clothes and other products seen on popular TV shows. According to Heather, the site has received 1.2 million visitors in a two-month period and garnered 600,000 click-through the retailer sites.

Think about it, a million pieces of user-generated video are uploaded each day, so plinking has the potential to bring in $250 million in revenues each year if only one percent of viewers of CGM convert.

I chose this article because the topic of product placement has always interested me, so when I saw that product placement is now going to be used on media channels such as the Internet, I wanted to read more to find out about how and when companies plan to do this.

I know when I am watching movies or television with my friends, if we see something we think is cute, we express it to one other, and sometimes we wonder, who makes that shirt, or where can I get those pants. Well, now with the use of technology, we do not have to wonder anymore. Any consumer can go the Web site StarStyle.com to find product information seen on these media, and with the new upcoming technology of plinking, if people/perspective consumers see something they like while watching a video on the internet, the consumer will just simply have to click on the desired object to find out how to buy it. Technology is making it easier for marketers to reach and target their consumers and at the same time, it is making it easier for consumers to either by products or gathers information about certain products of interest.