You See Pepsi, I See Coke: New Tricks for Product Placement 
…The streaming services have data on viewers’ spending habits and brand preferences, and they’re looking into new ways to use it.
First came product placement. In exchange for a payment, whether in cash, supplies or services, a TV show or a film would prominently display a brand-name product.
Then there was virtual product placement. Products or logos would be inserted into a show during editing, thanks to computer-generated imagery.
Now, with the rise of Netflix and other streaming platforms, the practice of working brands into shows and films is likely to get more sophisticated. In the near future, according to marketing executives who have had discussions with streaming companies, the products that appear onscreen may depend on who is watching.
In other words, a viewer known to be a whiskey drinker could see a billboard for a liquor brand in the background of a scene, while a teetotaler watching the same scene might see a billboard for a fizzy water company.
Streaming services could also drop in brand-name products based on when a show is being watched. Someone who watches a streaming show in the morning could see a carton of orange juice within a character’s reach, while a different viewer watching the same thing in the afternoon could see a can of soda.
It could start within a year, said Stephan Beringer, the chief executive of Mirriad, a virtual product placement company that has worked brands including Pepsi, Geico and Sherwin-Williams into ABC’s “Modern Family,” CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother” and the Univision program “El Dragón.”
Streaming services are more likely than traditional TV companies to pull off this specially targeted version of product placement because they have direct access to far more information on their customers. With every click of the remote, viewers tell the services something about themselves, information that can be used to determine which products might appeal to them.
This supercharged version of digital product placement is being developed at a time when the marketing business — which bet big on TV commercials for decades — needs new tricks to grab the attention of ad-hating cord-cutters.
Mr. Beringer, the head of Mirriad, said the current digital product placement technology has been successful enough to suggest that a bespoke version is a logical next step.“Viewers have been educated to look away from advertising,” he said. “But we’re putting something in that contextually makes sense. If you do it well, and it’s not annoying, it can work.”
Through digital video services like Hulu and YouTube, companies are already able to target viewers based on information about their ages, their locations, where they like to shop and other details. Some of the data is collected by the platforms themselves, others by outside data companies. And now streaming services are mulling how to make use of that information to create tailored product placements.
“Just like there’s no reason that all viewers of a program need to see the same advertisement, there’s no reason that they all need see the same brand integration or crossover campaign,” said David A. Schweidel, a marketing professor at Emory University……..
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