Embedded advertising, with a twist

Percept’s P9 Integrated has entered into a partnership with MirriAd to digitally embed brands within Bollywood movies and television broadcast content

P9 Integrated, Percept Holdings’ film marketing arm, has entered into a strategic partnership with MirriAd, a global embedded advertising specialist, in order to digitally embed brands within Bollywood movies and television broadcast content.

The deal will see MirriAd extending its embedded advertising technology to digitally integrate brands within existing content that is marketed by P9 in India. Apart from Bollywood films, such content will include film trailers produced for cinema, television and online media, wherein specifically selected and relevant brands will be digitally integrated, after production is complete.

Thus far, brands had to integrate themselves during production – a tedious procedure – and did not know how the placement would look until after production was over. According to Navin Shah, chief executive officer, P9 Integrated, the deal will enable instant brand placements in the last stages of post production, thereby saving time and allowing marketers to see and approve or redo the placement shot as required.

Navin Shah

Mark Popkiewicz

Shah says, “Embedded advertising represents a non-traditional revenue stream for brands and does not interfere with the viewer experience in any way. Filmmakers can now have an array of choice to select the correct brand fit and then digitally embed the brand.” In essence, what this means is that brand placements need not be pre-meditated; filmmakers will have ample time to associate and select the brand after the film shoot, while both the filmmaker and the brand owner will have better control over the final output.

Mark Popkiewicz, CEO, MirriAd, says, “Bollywood is recognised globally for its commercial film production. This partnership is significant because brand owners can now target audiences through popular Bollywood content using MirriAd’s embedded advertising platform.”

In the past, MirriAd has worked on the Bourne series of movies and partnered with Endemol on shows such as Big Brother and Deal or No Deal, wherein pack shots and logos of various brands were digitally integrated in the reality format. Through this deal, embedded advertising will be possible on soaps, news based content and reality/format shows.

In addition to such content, the MirriAd-P9 partnership will also look at integrating brands in music videos and online video content. For instance, in a Kylie Minogue pop music video, the setting was that of a night club, so the Smirnoff brand was digitally integrated at various places in the video after it was shot.

Home video movies will also have brands digitally embedded in them two-three months after their release. By then, a filmmaker usually knows the fate of his film and, if it is a favourable one, then he is already sure about the eyeballs his film will get on home video (DVD purchases) as well as through television broadcasts. In such cases, MirriAd and P9 will enable filmmakers to integrate brands even after the film’s release.

The embedded advertising industry in India is currently worth Rs 400 crore, and this is likely to touch Rs 1,200 crore by 2010, says Shah.

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