The Return of Overt Product Placement
“Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor,” Mike Myers states as he reaches into the front-and-center Pizza Hut box, and lifts a slice while grinning at the camera.
A handsome, clean-cut, 90s business-chic Rob Lowe retorts: “I’m sorry that you feel that way, but basically it’s the nature of the beast.”
“Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but for me the beast doesn’t include selling out,” Myers replies as he slowly lifts Doritos bag into the frame, plucks one out, puts it in his mouth, and chews while looking into the camera with satisfied approval.
With true commitment to the bit, Wayne’s World poked fun at the obvious and occasionally-not-so-well-done product placement of their cohorts in the 1990s film and TV industry - all while effectively banging out four massive product placements in one minute.
Come the turn of the century and throughout the 2010s, brands and the industry worked to find a sweet-spot, balancing product placement in an effective yet discreet way.
Why?
Because they had to.
After groundbreaking research in 1994 done by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright, known as the PKM (Persuasion Knowledge Model), the film and TV industry found viewers were developing negative psychological responses to overt placements as they triggered critical thinking and broke immersion from the storyline of the show or movie.
Basically - it just became too obvious to viewers that they were being sold something, and it became a major turnoff.
So as we entered the 2000s, product placement integrated its way into media as more of a background aesthetic. Placements became immersed within the storyline - or quite literally put in the background - on the kitchen counter, or in the driveway. Brand visibility became seamless, natural and effective.
Instead of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) showing off their Domino’s Pizza to the camera before eating it, we got “WILSONNNNN” in Castaway (2000), Phil Dunphy’s desire for an iPad in Modern Family, and Eleven fiending for Eggo Waffles in Stranger Things (2016).
But flash forward to 2026 - and we just may be seeing the emergence of blatant product placement again.
With the long and painful death of cable TV and traditional ad breaks in the 2020s, the age of streaming has altered the landscape of advertising. Now, we have skippable ads and options for viewers to get rid of them by paying for premium subscriptions - forcing the industry to shift once again.
According to MARKETPLACE, “With traditional funding harder to secure, some productions are increasingly looking to product placement and brand integration not just as creative tools, but as financial lifelines.”
Global spending in product placement has surpassed $30 billion USD, seeing an over 12% growth last year - quickly becoming the fastest growing ad-space for brands, and like I’ve said - the integration isn’t necessarily being done discreetly.
With brand partnerships funding these production budgets, they’ve forced their way into having a seat at the table in the writing room as well: “Brands are increasingly partnering with content creators from the earliest stages helping finance scripts and integrating into the story itself,” according to Stacy Jones, founder CEO of Hollywood Branded.
Take this concept with the fact that writers are now considering that viewers might be on their phones while watching, this is how we get: “Pepsi Defeats Bad Guy” in Madame Web (2024), “Papa Johns Is A Secret Entrance To An Ancient Underground Treasure Vault In Barcelona” with Uncharted (2022) and “Snickers Wrapper Causes System Failure Of Elite Security Technology Allowing ‘Distortus Rex’ To Escape” in Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025).
It’s not being done artistically, and perhaps time will tell if the partnerships are being effective for brands. The numbers will show us soon enough, and the industry will shift as it will and always has.
