Many assume branded entertainment is a recent invention. In reality, brands and entertainment have been intertwined since the earliest days of media, evolving together as technology, distribution, and consumer behavior changed.

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1896: The First Product Placement

One of the earliest known films, the Lumière Brothers' Washing Day in Switzerland, released in 1896, featured Lever Brothers' Sunlight Soap. The film was distributed by the same company behind the product. This moment is widely considered the first recorded example of a brand appearing within filmed storytelling.

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1927: The First Academy Award-Winning Film to Feature Product Placement

Wings, the 1927 silent film that won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, featured several prominent close-ups of Hershey's chocolate bars. The practice was still informal and largely unstructured — but a pattern was forming. Brands and entertainment have been connected since the first frames of cinema.

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The 1930s: Popeye and the First Proof of Scale

Popeye became one of Hollywood's most popular characters in the 1930s, and his devotion to spinach had measurable consequences. The character is credited with saving the industry, driving a 33% increase in American spinach consumption during that decade — one of the earliest documented examples of a fictional character changing consumer behavior at scale.

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The 1950s: Soap Operas and the Birth of Brand-Funded Content

Companies like Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers didn't just advertise on television. They funded and produced the programming itself, with episodic daytime dramas built around the audiences they wanted to reach. Those programs became known as soap operas, a term that survives to this day as a direct reference to the brands that created them.

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The model extended to primetime. Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle was the top-rated show on television, pulling a 61.6 rating in the 1950-51 season. To put that in context: the most-watched scripted show on network television in 2024 drew a 3. Brand-sponsored content wasn't a niche experiment. It was the dominant form of television entertainment.

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The Late 1970s: The First Placement Agencies

What had been an informal, relationship-driven practice began to professionalize. The first dedicated product placement agencies emerged in Hollywood in the late 1970s, representing brands to productions and managing placements as a business. For the first time, there was an industry infrastructure of people whose sole job was to get products on screen, track their appearances, and demonstrate their value. The foundation was in place. What the industry needed was proof.

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1982: Reese's Pieces, E.T., and the Birth of Modern Product Placement

Hershey's committed $1 million to tie Reese's Pieces to Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and secured the right to feature the film in their own advertising. Within two weeks of release, Reese's Pieces sales jumped 65 percent. According to Concave Brand Tracking, the film has since been seen approximately 1 billion times, making the placement worth an estimated $40 million in 1982 dollars, nearly $135 million in today's dollars.

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Mars had passed on the opportunity, having been offered M&Ms first.

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E.T. didn't just produce a remarkable return. It proved the model to the entire industry and launched the modern era of product placement as a strategic discipline.

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2001: BMW Films Proves Audiences Will Seek Out Brand Stories

In 2001, BMW produced The Hire, a series of eight short films made for the internet, directed by acclaimed filmmakers and starring Clive Owen as a driver alongside Gary Oldman, Forest Whitaker, Don Cheadle, Madonna, and more. The films were cinematic, not commercial. They were designed to be watched, not endured.

 

The results were unprecedented for branded content: 11 million views in four months, more than 100 million over four years, a 12% increase in BMW sales following launch, and $26 million in media value. BMW greenlit a new series in 2014.

 

The Hire didn't just perform. It demonstrated that audiences would actively seek out brand-funded content if it was worth their time — and established the creative and commercial template that the entire industry has been building on ever since.

The 2000s: Reality Television Rewrites the Economics

Reality television arrived with a structural advantage for brands: lower production costs and natural opportunities for integration that scripted drama couldn't offer. Starting with Survivor in 2000, and accelerating through The Amazing Race, The Restaurant in 2003, and The Apprentice in 2004, brand integrations began helping fund entire seasons. The economics of television production were shifting, and brands were becoming part of the financing equation, not just the ad break.

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1999–2010: The Streaming Era: Ad-Skipping Forces Brands to Rethink Everything

TiVo launched in 1999 and changed viewer behavior permanently. By 2010, the majority of consumers said they skipped or wanted to skip all commercials. Streaming platforms built their early audiences on the promise of an ad-free experience — a promise Netflix would eventually abandon with the launch of its ad-supported tier in 2022.

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The direction of travel was unmistakable. Audiences weren't just avoiding ads. They were building their entire media consumption around environments designed to exclude them. Brands that had relied on interruption as their primary channel faced a structural problem, and branded entertainment moved from a creative option to a strategic imperative.