Dive Brief:

• Interpublic Group subsidiaries Mediabrands and Rogers & Cowan PMK (R&CPMK) on June 30 launched UpstreamPop, per a press release. The tech platform provides end-to-end solutions for clients seeking brand integration opportunities with content creators and media platforms across the entertainment industry.
• UpstreamPop will unify brands and content producers, identify integration opportunities and help marketers reach high-value audiences by using proprietary measurement tools and IPG's data library.
• At launch, the platform will feature more than 2,000 brand integration opportunities within non-ad-supported content across film, television, music videos and more. UpstreamPop seeks to help IPG clients reach consumers who continue to shift their attention away from linear TV toward other platforms.

Dive Insight:

IPG's UpstreamPop combines the audience intelligence of Mediabrands and the entertainment industry expertise of R&CPMK into a holistic solution for clients looking for brand integration opportunities. These opportunities are increasingly important as consumers continue to shift away from linear TV to streaming services that feature premium, ad-free subscriptions. Nearly 75% of viewers under 55 prefer to consume content on streaming platforms in place of linear TV, per data cited by R&CPMK CEO Mark Owens.

"UpstreamPop not only provides brands the most accurate tool in the market to find the best integration opportunities to reach their target audience, whether on linear or streaming, it also provides our clients the ability to secure their deals in real-time," Owens said in the press release.

Along with utilizing Mediabrands' and R&CPMK's capabilities, UpstreamPop taps into IPG's data library to make the offering data-driven and measurable. Brands can also use search and filtering tools to find the best opportunities to reach high-value audiences.

The launch of UpstreamPop comes as the streaming wars enter a new phase as platforms consolidate and shift previously ad-free platforms. Disney+ and Netflix are set to launch ad-supported tiers later this year. Still, many viewers pay for ad-free experiences on these platforms, making brand integrations and product placement a key way to reach consumers that are difficult to reach with traditional advertising.

Even as it prepares to finally open its platform to ads, Netflix's most popular shows still demonstrate the power of brand integration. Coca-Cola and Lacoste saw $1.83 million and $1.8 million of product placement value, respectively, with their integrations in the first volume of the fourth season of "Stranger Things."

Meanwhile, Amazon has looked to streamline brand integration in both its ad-free Prime Video and ad-supported Freevee platforms with a Virtual Product Placement (VPP) tool that can add approved brands into programming on a plug-and-play basis after filming has wrapped.