761 International Journal of Advertising, 28(5), pp. 761–782 © 2009 Advertising Association Published by the Warc, www.warc.com DOI: 10.2501/S0265048709200898 Today’s practice of brand placement and the industry behind it Edith Smit, Eva van Reijmersdal and Peter Neijens University of Amsterdam This article presents a content analysis of brand placement on Dutch television, fol- lowed by 24 interviews with the parties involved. By combining a content analysis and a practitioners’ perspective, this article offers unique insights into the increasingly popular phenomenon of integrating advertising into television content. Analysis of one week’s television programming showed that programmes with brand placement are growing into a significant part of Dutch television. A fifth of these sponsored programmes can be classified as brand-integrated programmes in which brands are an intrinsic part of the pro- gramme. The practitioner interviews showed that these brand-integrated programmes were considered as the future of advertising. Moreover, the interviews gave insights into the mutual relationships between the different parties, showing that practitioners use the law restrictions to estimate the acceptance levels of the audience with respect to televi- sion sponsoring. Introduction Editorial and commercial content are increasingly mixed in television pro- grammes today. This phenomenon is known as in-programme sponsoring, product placement or brand placement: the commercially inspired inclu- sion of products and/or brands in editorial content (Karrh 1998; Russell & Belch 2005; Schneider & Cornwell 2005). Worldwide spending on brand placement was almost $3.4 billion in 2006 and has grown to $4.4 billion in 2007. While the US remains the largest global market, accounting for two- thirds in spending, growth is driven by relaxed European regulations and emerging Asian markets (Marx 2007).