Thursday, April 05, 2018

Product Placement on Netflix


Netflix is on a roll at the moment.  New shows or movies seemingly every day (or actually two every day - they have announced a plan to commission 700 this year), stats that kids in the UK prefer it to BBC iPlayer, and their shows are generating lots of buzz.

One recent show that I've seen is Queer Eye, the re-boot of the NBC make-over show from the early 2000s.

It's a good show, if a bit focused on showing that all of life's problems can be solved by having a haircut, re-modelling your house, and spending lots of money on a new wardrobe.

What's really interesting is that it's the first Netflix show I've seen to openly use product placement.  Nothing that blatant, but you'd assume that the car company has paid, as have other manufacturers whose logos prominently appear during the show.

Netflix has a policy of no advertising breaks and no sponsorship, but I suspect that this shows that they are now more open to commercial deals.  I don't think ad breaks will come any time soon, but the increasing breadth of content, including chat shows, uses formats that people would be more willing to accept sponsorship for.  It's hardly like they have a charter for no ads or no sponsors, unlike the BBC.

I'll update this when I come across other examples of commercial activity on Netflix.

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