Subliminal Product Placement in movies (study)

In spring 2013, I conducted a comprehensive study on the advertising effects of Product Placement. Here, I especially focused on those effects that are only perceived unconsciously.

For this purpose, I first produced a short film in order to be able to integrate the placement exactly the way I wanted it to be and also have the ideal content right in place. This was also necessary because different versions should be tested with decreasing recognizability of the advertising stimulus. To find the perfect settings, different variations (10) of the stimulus were tested in various pre-tests before the final cut. As stimulus, I used the beer brand “Veltins” that was integrated at two times in the movie.

The actual study was conducted online. For this purpose, a special tool was developed and programmed. This way, I not only got perfect and detailed measurement instruments, but also could make it look more like a usual online movie streaming platform than a manipulating empirical study. At the same time, any interaction could be measured in detail — even if it was about the time that the user spent at a specific area of the website or the way he played the video.

I put the results of the study (in a simplified and abbreviated form) in the following infographic.