Today advertisers are integrating their brands into content in order to capture the attention of digitally empowered audiences. Significantly, many brands are turning to “social media influencers” to endorse, demonstrate, and promote products from within their social media content. To keep it as authentic as possible, brands often let these “influencers” integrate the brands as they see fit.
In the first decades of broadcasting, commercials were integrated into the advertiser-owned programming: through program titles (Kraft Music Hall, Kraft Television Theater) and cast commercials (Maxwell House Show Boat performers usually sipped coffee during intermission). So this trend is not a new one, but a return to an old strategy of integration of advertising into popular entertainment and the use of celebrity endorsers.
For more on this, see my post on The Conversation.
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