Product placement is back on TV today, the ban has been lifted for this form of advertising, with the first programme being This Morning today in the UK, 28 February 2011.

This is great for many companies and big brands to get their products on the TV, but there are many new rules which apply to this form of advertising.

So, references and displaying of products are now allowed in TV shows, soaps and one off drama’s, but some of the rules are that gambling services, unhealthy food like high fat, sugar and salt, tobacco, medicines, alchohol, weapons etc are not permitted for this type of advertising.

Also, product placement won’t be allowed for BBC, News, childrens programmes, current affairs and such like programmes.

The one important factor for product placement, is when any product or service is referenced or displayed on the TV, then it must clearly display the ‘P’ for 3 seconds at the beginning and the end of the programme/film to make it clear that an item is being advertised as a product.

Product placement is an advertising channel that must be controlled to ensure that it is not abused as there are many concerns that TV programmes would be full of adverts in addition to the already advertisement breaks during programmes, but this will be a great way to pay for the programmes but also to fund new ones, and in time hopefully improve the experience of watching TV. The telecoms regulator Ofcom has said that product placement must be editorially justified and not unduly prominent.  So hopefully we won’t see this form of advertising go all out of hand!

The first appearance of product placement was on this morning’s TV programme called This Morning, it was a Nescafe Dolce Gusto coffee machine which was placed in the background of the cooking feature of the programme, at the back of the kitchen, it was said on the TV News that Nescafe had paid £100,000 to display the product for three months on the show.

I’m hoping this is a good thing (in small measures), but only time will tell if we will be invaded by big brands by seeing their products displayed on films and programmes on the TV, we’ll just have to wait and see!