Texas Advertising joins International Product Placement Research Council.

The University of Texas at Austin has become the first in what is expected to be a group of several leading academic institutions that will join the International Product Placement Research Council (IPPRC), an ad hoc think tank being organized by iTVX. Frank Zazza, founder of iTVX said that IPPRC is intended to help the burgeoning field of product placement catch up with other Madison Avenue disciplines that have had years of research vetting to establish themselves.

For UT, the alliance gives researchers access to real world data on product placement being done by agencies, advertisers, and networks. "Typically, it has been hard for academic researchers to get a hold of that data, which is industry specific, "said Isabella Cunningham, chair of the Department of Advertising. "That's why we think this relationship is very interesting to us--because we're trying to teach and graduate tomorrow's industry leaders.

Zazza has spent the past several years developing and marketing iTVX's showcase, a system that measures the return on investment that puts a price on product placements that run within television programs.

3/22/2004