MARKETING STRATEGY 1: Blackmail you into viewing its hour-long adver-show on Hulu:

Those Hulu users who watch the "Bing-a-thon" will receive a reward: the ability to watch TV shows or movies on hulu.com without commercial interruptions. (Yes, you have to watch a commercial to avoid watching other commercials.)

MARKETING STRATEGY 2: Have product snickered at by television's least funny late night host:

For instance, the segments on "Late Show" will present Mr. Fallon as a quiz master, asking contestants to use bing.com to search for answers to questions in categories like travel, health and shopping.
" ‘Bing' sounds like a Jimmy Fallon word," Mr. Silverman said, laughing.

Here's another Jimmy Fallon word: Shut Up. Google it.
[NYT]

Before Allison started NonSociety, she actually sold product placements on her personal blog to Dunkin Donuts. She told us plans to bring a similar model to her new venture. "In the future, we absolutely intend to have authentic product placements," Allison said, mentioning Canon, Victoria's Secret, Sephora, American Express, and Cisco as brands she hopes will buy in. "We only want to plug products we genuinely believe in," Allison said. "We think that is the future of marketing — genuine product recommendations, no bullshit."

Uncomfortably, we're on the same page as Allison when it comes to the market potential of product placements in online media. One of the more successful publishing startups over that past few years has been EQAL, the team behind Lonelygirl15 and KateModern, which actually earned solid revenues stuffing shows with as many Neutrogena and Hershey products as any episode of America's Next Top Model. That company's cofounders, Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett, just landed $5 million in funding.

Allison has higher goals. "12 months from now," she tells us, "you will no longer refer to me as a nontrepreneur." True. Product placement requires some level of trust from the audience. If even Allison's non-product-placement endorsements continue to be so gushily nongenuine, we likely won't have to refer to her at all.