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Almost 50% of Media Execs Have Paid for Placement

Almost 50 percent (48.9 percent) of senior marketing executives report paying for an editorial or broadcast placement, according to the results of the fourth annual PRWeek/Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) Marketing Management Survey. Additionally, nearly half (45.6 percent) of all respondents who indicated their companies had never paid for a placement said they would consider it in the future.

According to the paid placement survey, which polled 266 U.S. chief marketing officers, marketing VPs and marketing directors, 24 percent of senior marketing executives said their companies had paid for an editorial placement; nine percent said their companies had paid for a broadcast placement; and nearly 16 percent reported their companies had paid for both.

“The question of editorial credibility is as critical for the future of the PR profession as it is for consumers and the media,” said Mark Hass, chief executive officer of MS&L. “If people with big marketing budgets think they can buy a story, it rubs against the very premise of earned media - the notion that there is an objective brain filtering the information. The bottom line is that no reputable marketer should pay for a news placement. It must be earned.”

The paid placement debate grew in intensity last year, when The New Yorker devoted all the advertising in its Aug. 22, 2004 edition to retail marketer Target.

In its aftermath, the American Society of Magazine Editors scolded The New Yorker and issued revised guidelines governing the separation of advertising and editorial content in consumer magazines during the American Magazine Conference last fall.

And while surveys are taken and guidelines issued, the genie might already be out of the bottle when it comes to public perception.  A study released in October by Starcom USA found that 65 percent of consumers think magazines accept money from advertisers for mentions in editorial content.

And why wouldn’t they? A recent analysis of brand appearances on network prime-time TV in the fourth quarter of last year, released Monday by TNS Media Intelligence, showed that nearly 11 percent of all programming minutes include a brand reference, with some shows having more minutes of product placement than TV commercial time.

And earlier this week, Commercial Alert sent letters to more than 300 book review editors asking them not to review Cathy’s Book, a young adult book that has a partnership with Cover Girl to include product placement for lipslicks and other products within the book’s content.