Product placement is about to become bigger than ever before

JUST THIS month TV3 held a seminar for advertisers — one that may well turn out to be a watershed in the history of broadcasting in this country.

This conference emphasised how brands could showcase their wares using a relatively new concept to Irish broadcasting — product placement — and offered advertisers a tailor-made vehicle for it.

After a slow start in this country — it was prohibited in domestically-produced programmes here until 2011 — it seems that product placement, which is when a company pays a TV channel or a programme-maker to include its products or brands in a programme, is about to hit the ground running.