“Bandersnatch” was interactive. Viewers determined how the story, set in 1980s Britain, unfolded by clicking on choices presented to them at various forks in the narrative road. Early on, the film asked viewers to choose between two breakfast cereals, Quaker Sugar Puffs or Kellogg’s Frosties. Their selection determined which one would appear in a commercial shown on a TV set in the background of a scene later in the film.
Sugar Puffs and Frosties were not included as part of an ad, Netflix said, but rather as a way for the “Black Mirror” creators to enhance the film’s 1980s setting. Netflix was not paid by the cereal companies.
But all those remotes clicking on one cereal or the other provided Netflix with data on its subscribers’ preferences. Reed Hastings, the Netflix chief executive, cited “Bandersnatch” during a webcast timed to an earnings report this year. Holding up two boxes of cereal, he announced that 73 percent of “Bandersnatch” viewers had selected Kellogg’s Frosties.
The other executives on the webcast chuckled.
“The most critical data point of the quarter!” joked Spencer Wang, a vice president.
Netflix, which does not run commercials, said it would not use the information it had gleaned from “Bandersnatch,” saying in a statement that “the privacy of our members is a top priority.”
But marketing executives like Ricky Ray Butler, the chief executive of the product placement company Branded Entertainment Network, are enthusiastic about the possibility of inserting brand-name products into streaming shows based on data generated by interactive programming. Actually being able to do so, he said, may still be a long way off.
“The world’s not ready for it yet,” he said. “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/business/media/streaming-product-placement.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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