Alejandro Lalinde

Vevo and Mirriad Now Let You Retroactively Put Products and Placements in Videos

Product placement. If you're a director or producer, you love the money, but hate the strings that come attached: Ceding editorial and treatment control to a third party who might care more about their product shots than making something that serves the greater goal. Also, you hate the agency people on set. And if you're an agency, you hate having to fund a bulk of a video budget and then getting pushed back at every step. Also, you hate being on set with all those production pirates.

So, what if you could retroactively make placements in videos: Affixing advertisements to bare walls, changing storefronts to national chains and all sorts of other digital chicanery.

Genius, right? VEVO has teamed with international company Mirriad — who specialize in "advertising for the skip generation" — to make it happen with music videos. The initiative was first teased via an AdAge report and then announced at the video streaming giant's NewFronts presentation last night,.

First up for the co-venture is Aloe Blacc "The Man" and the newly inserted Levi's ads are constrained just to the VEVO.com version (and not the YouTube.com)...

Next up is all sorts of potential genius... Maybe a body groomer would work great in "Big Bad Wolf"?