According to Wikipedia, product placement is "a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent." This means that it would otherwise qualify as a form of advertisement in real life.
However, in the context of Danbooru's fanart, real life product placement such as sponsorship of a sport team may be presented in an otherwise non-promotional work for the sake of realism. In addition of character interacting with real world brands regardless if the artist was sponsored or not, various "fictional" imitation of the practice is also present, which begs the question on how to tag these posts.
Should the image featuring a product placement considered an ad? Should the practice of sponsorship considered a product placement? Should a work featuring a fictional brand being depicted in the same way as real world ads be tagged as product placement/ads?
I would LOVE to be able to search all product placement even if not an actual paid-for ad (the constraints of the IRL product placement definition). E.g. real products and logos. Searching logo, copyright name, company name, or copytags: >1 doesn't really work. Most of what's in product placement fits this appeal, so I'd like to see the wiki definition expanded to match what people are actually tagging it with: anything with real brands and products.
I think product placement should be for when a brand name or product is in art, sponsored/paid-for or otherwise. It would be hard to get people to use it for actual commissioned sponsorships, anyway. The question for me is whether to include brand-name imitations.
Proposed examples
Character is obviously holding a Nikon camera
Character is obviously holding a Big Mac: post #7018882
Character is holding a Pocari Sweat with the label saying "Pocari Sweat": post #8727322
Gas station has the name or logo of a real gas station visible
Proposed non-examples
Interior or exterior of what is obviously McDonald's but it's not mentioned and there are no logos
Magazine covers or any overlaid graphics that simply name a copyright or brand: post #8582109
Actual advertisements that just have copyright logos and text on the side: post #5119464
Character is holding a fast food item but it's not identifiable as any real life menu item
Character is holding a camera but it's not identifiable as any real life gadget
I'm open to including all these as product placement anyway as they give off the same feeling.
Character is obviously holding a real-life product but the label is a brand name imitation: post #7896703
Character is wearing sportswear covered in fake brands that don't exist whatsoever
Character is wearing sportswear covered in fake brands that exist in the established universe of the copyright
Ultimately, the tag usage needs to be described in a way that you can see and is at least somewhat consistent. Additionally, I don't think there's a need to alias or imply anything to or from ad or sponsor.
For starters, while they're closely related, I think that at the very least ad and product placement should remain separate. The former is for works created purely for advertisement, while the latter has brands inserted into a work that has a different purpose. This doesn't make the entire thing an ad, how obnoxious the product placement might be.
As for the product placement tag, care should be taken to not dilute it to the point of uselessness (which is the case with the expanded definition, which was made without consulting the forums). While I think including fictional product placement is fine, not every instance of a brand being on-screen is product placement. It's often just for realism, and not made to draw specific attention to the brand in particular. post #8438662 is (paid?) product placement, post #6410491 is not.
Regardless, the wiki changes should be reverted until a consensus of some form is reached, before someone gardens a million posts onto it and gives everyone a headache.
Agreed with reverting wiki until consensus on tag definition
And if it included every real product, then every identifiable model of phone like iphone would also fit. That's only 2k posts, but the product placement tag is only 3k posts big right now.
