When did everything become a commercial???

I have no problem with product placement in movies and tv shows.  You want to drink an ice cold coke during your barbecue - go right ahead.  Pass by a MacDonald's on your drive to work - no problem.  It's subtle and people give you money for it - more power to you.



So I'm watching Being Erica a few weeks ago and in the middle of a scene it is decided that Julianne is drinking too many lattes and her assistant suggests that she should try the all new <insert water infusion product here>.  This wasn't just some quick placement.  It was a 5 minute discussion about how delicious it was and how handy they were as you could just add them to water.  Oh and can you believe it's low calorie and caffeine free?  When they finally got back to their regularly scheduled script I just shook my head and let it go.

So a week later I'm watching Being Erica again and the show starts with Erica test driving the all new <insert car brand here>.  In the next 5-10 minutes we learned all about the hands free technology, the fuel efficiency, the "I'm too lazy to learn how to park so my car will do it for me" assist, and all the other bells and whistles they could throw in there.  And did I mention that Julianne also talked again about the product from the prior episode - It's just so darn tasty! 

Fast forward to today when I'm reading the new House of Night novel and I get to a part where Zoey wants clarification on what one of her professors is telling her so she compares it to TrueBlood.  Okay that's fine, but professor doesn't know what she's talking about so she goes into more detail and then adds that the books are actually called the Sookie Stackhouse novels "by a cool human author named Charlaine Harris".  They both then agree that they should read the books.  

WTF????  Now my books are advertising other books!!  I wonder if Shakespeare could have gotten a few extra shillings if he had mentioned the all new Lye soap for removing that damn spot.