Amazon Prime product placement upsell

Product placement is such an interesting concept to me. Some movies and TV shows are shameless about advertising products, while others try to subtly sneak in mentions or visuals of a brand. My least favorite version of this is when you see the protagonist (or antagonist) of a show driving a car and the logo of the vehicle is overly-emphasized when a shot Is framed up.

I’ve been watching a few shows lately, one of them being The Boys. In season two one character is constantly drinking Fresca. I hadn’t thought about Fresca in years. It’s one of those weird products that somehow continues to exist even though I can’t remember the last time I saw one out in the wild. On a hot summer day, Fresca hits. Seeing someone drink Fresca over and over again made me want one. Even though I was painfully aware of the product placement, it worked on me (though I have not purchased any Fresca yet).

This got me thinking about how cumbersome it is to see something on a show and then opt to get onto a browser, or Amazon, find the product, and then purchase it. What if you could just buy whatever product was being mentioned or shown on screen?

Some people might dislike this idea, but man, advertisers would love it. There are many implications to this, one being that product placement becomes easier to quantify if you’re making it directly purchasable through the app. Amazon’s product ecosystem makes this a natural play, while someone like Netflix would need to partner with a commerce platform. If this ever comes to life, please don’t get mad at me.

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