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"American Idol" has three main sponsors, Cingular Wireless (which has since been bought by AT&T, but I’ll refer to it in this chapter as Cingular because that was its name at the time the ads ran), the Ford Motor Company, and Coca-Cola, each of whom fork over an estimated $26 million annually to have their brands featured on one of the  highest-rated shows in television history.

And this is only a small part of an enormous and expen­sive worldwide industry. According to a study conducted by PQ Media, in 2006, companies paid a total of $3.36 billion globally to have their products featured in various TV shows, music videos, and movies. In 2007, this increased to $4.38 bil­lion and is predicted to reach a whopping $7.6 billion by 2010. That’s a whole lot of money, given that this would be the first time that the effectiveness of product placement has ever been scientifically tested or validated. As I mentioned, I can’t remember what I ate for dinner the other night, much less the Honda commercial I saw on TV yesterday. So who’s to say I’ll remember what soft drink Simon Cowell was sipping as he leaned forward, eyes gleaming, to lambaste yet another poor soul’s rendition of Alicia Keys’s “Fallin’ ”?

As viewers, we used to be able to tell the difference be­tween products that somehow play a role or part in a TV show or movie (known in advertising circles as Product Integration) and the standard thirty-second advertising spots that run dur­ing the commercial breaks (known as, well, commercials). But increasingly, these two kinds of ads are becoming harder and harder to separate.

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On "American Idol," Coke and Cingular Wireless not only run thirty-second ads during commercial breaks, they also feature their products prominently during the show itself. (When asked by a fellow judge if he liked a contestant’s song during the February 21, 2008, broadcast, Simon commented, “How much I love Coca-Cola!” — and then took a sip.) The three judges all keep cups of America’s most iconic soft drink in front of them, and both the judges and the contestants sit on chairs or couches with rounded contours specifically designed to look like a bottle of Coca-Cola. Before and after their au­ditions, contestants enter (or exit in a foul-mouthed rage) a room whose walls are painted a chirpy, unmistakable Coca-Cola red. Whether through semi-subtle imagery or traditional advertising spots, Coca-Cola is present approximately 60 per­cent of the time on "American Idol."

Cingular, too, pops up repeatedly throughout the show, though to a lesser extent. As the host, Ryan Seacrest, repeat­edly reminds us, viewers can dial in, or vote for their favorite contestant via text-message, from a Cingular Wireless cell phone — the only carrier that permits "Idol" voting via text-messaging (text messages from other cell phone providers are evidently discarded, meaning you either have to call in for a fee or forever hold your peace). What’s more, the Cingular logo — which looks like an orange cat splattered on a road — shows up alongside every set of phone and text-messaging numbers shown onscreen. And to further cement the rela­tionship between the show and the brand, in 2006 Cingular announced it would begin offering ring tones of live per­formances from the previous night’s show to download to their mobile phones. The cost: $2.95.

Of the show’s three main sponsors, Ford is the only ad­vertiser that doesn’t share an actual stage with the contestants. Ford’s $26 million goes only toward traditional thirty-second ad spots (though in 2006 Ford announced that it had hired American Idol Taylor Hicks — the gray-haired guy — to record a relentlessly up-tempo, feel-good song for both TV and radio entitled “Possibilities” to promote the company’s new “Drive On Us” end-of-year sales event). During the show’s sixth sea­son, Ford also produced original music videos featuring the company’s cars which ran during the commercial breaks in each of the final eleven shows and partnered with the "Ameri­can Idol" Web site for a weekly sweepstakes promotion.

What’s with this relentless advertising assault? In part, it can be attributed to advertisers’ calculated end-run against popular new technologies like TiVo, which allows viewers to skip over the TV commercials and watch their favorite shows without interruption. “The shift from programmer- to consumer-controlling program choices is the biggest change in the media business in the past 25 or 30 years,” Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC Universal Television Group, has been quoted as say­ing. In essence, sponsors are letting us know that it’s futile to hide, duck, dodge, fast-forward, or take an extended bathroom break: they’ll get to us somehow.

But do they? Do all these meticulously planned, shrewdly placed products really penetrate our long-term memory and leave any lasting impression on us at all? Or are they what I like to call “wallpaper” ads — instantly forgettable, the adver­tising equivalent of elevator music? That’s what the next part of our brain study would find out.

The setup was simple. Our four hundred carefully chosen subjects were each fitted with a black,  turban-like cap wired with a dozen electrodes that resembled tea candles. Re­searchers then adjusted and looped the wires over their heads, and finally topped off the ensemble with a pair of viewing goggles. In their SST garb, our study subjects looked like ran­dom members of an affable Roswell, New Mexico, cult, or a bunch of participants at a psychic fair.

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