Product Placement

You have to wonder what the branding pitch might have been behind the new Orbit gum Web series "Dirty Shorts" that premiered last week. This is the first effort from actors Jason Bateman and Will Arnett and their DumbDumb branded video production company working under IAC's Electus.

As nearly every person on the planet knows, the World Cup kicks off tomorrow. Given that the world of online video has a tendency to reflect our global society's collective consciousness, it is no surprise that there has already been plenty pre-game excitement across the web's video destinations.

When McDonald's contracted to have its branded iced coffee cups on the set of KVVU Las Vegas' morning newscast in 2008, the fast-food behemoth got way more bang for its buck than it had bargained for. The Las Vegas Sun wrote about the product placement play, as did The New York Times a day later.

If you're having a hard time growing sales for a mature brand, here's an idea: Give your most-loyal consumers reason to use it more. It's worked for Kraft, which has posted solid sales gains on Philadelphia Cream Cheese, a brand that had been essentially flat since 2005.

It's a seemingly simple innovation that could juice the online-video advertising industry by $100 million and help restore the economics of quality content creation: let viewers pick their own ads.

New software called PlaceLocal builds display ads automatically, scouring the Internet for references to a neighborhood restaurant, a grocery store or another local business. Then it combines the photographs it finds with reviews, customer comments and other text into a customized online ad for the business.  

Google has announced a bid to dominate the television screen in the same way that it dominates the web - launching Google TV to software developers in San Francisco, the company set out its ambition to combine "the best of the web with the best of TV".

NBC and Microsoft Advertising on Thursday announced a partnership designed to promote NBC's "More Colorful" Fall 2010 program lineup. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The partnership will be executed through a multi-screen advertising campaign, including MSN, X-box, Microsoft Mobile and Bing.

Lego embedded technology on the side of their packaging to give shoppers an idea of what the kit inside can produce. The boxes interface with kiosks in Lego stores. Shoppers hold up the box and code activates the augmented reality feature, displaying a 3D model of the Lego kit.