Virtual advertising becomes a reality.

Why's Bogart drinking a Corona? It's virtual advertising and FIFA is supporting it.

American television viewers, already numb to the Coke bottles and the Kenneth Cole shopping bags so often placed in the background of their favourite sitcoms, might not have even noticed the brand icons that appeared in the 17 March episode of the UPN series, Seven Days. Product placements are hardly a new idea in the increasingly blurry world of advertising and the media it supports. But there was a crucial difference between these bags and bottles and their run-of-the-mill product-placement cousins: they were never a part of the scene to begin with. They were virtual.

Coke and Evian bottles, Kenneth Cole bags and a sign for Wells Fargo Bank were inserted digitally into the Seven Days episode during post-production, using technology known as Live Video Insertion System (L-VIS), which can add 3-D images and animation with such realism that viewers are unable to distinguish which elements are electronically injected.

Developed and patented by Princeton Video Imaging …