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Global Product Placement Spending Grew 12.3% in 2023 to $29.6B, Slowing from 14.3% in 2022 Due to Impact of Strikes; Spending to Post Strong, But Slower, Growth in 2024

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Global product placement spending grew 12.3% in 2023 to $29.63 billion, decelerating from the 14.3% gain posted in 2023, caused primarily by the impact of the US writer and actor strikes, which shuttered production studios for months and delayed releases of new TV, film, videogame and music video content, according to new research released today by PQ Media.

STAMFORD, Conn., July 25, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Global product placement spending grew 12.3% in 2023 to $29.63 billion, decelerating from the 14.3% gain posted in 2023, caused primarily by the impact of the US writer and actor strikes, which shuttered production studios for months and delayed releases of new TV, film, videogame and music video content, according to new research released today by PQ Media. Product placement spending worldwide is on pace to grow at a slightly slower 12.1% to $32.98 billion this year, which would mark the fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth, following the worst decline ever in pandemic-struck 2020, according to the 10th edition of PQ Media’s Global Product Placement Forecast 2024-2028.

“Product placement has grown substantially during the past two decades because brand marketers have become more willing to invest in the creative integration of their products in storylines that will garner them strong brand awareness, while creating positive brand associations.”

While the US market was impacted the most by the Hollywood strikes, global markets were affected as well, due to the increase in international partnerships in recent years. Nevertheless, the four-year growth streak has placed product placement on a path to end 2024 nearly double the size it was back in 2018, as brand integration opportunities have greatly expanded across multiple media platforms and channels.

While the overall TV platform still commanded the lion’s share of product placement spending globally at 70.1% in 2023 and movies remain the second-largest platform (11.9%), various digital media and recorded music channels have driven the multi-year streak of double-digit growth – both in the overall global market and the US, which remains the world’s largest market – including social media & blogs, influencer sites, virtual (artificial intelligence) placements, music videos and podcasts, among others.

In the US, which accounted for 56.2% of the global market for product placement in all media, total spending rose 11.9% in 2023 to $16.54 billion, decelerating notably from the 15.1% growth posted in 2022. Five of the six media platforms grew at double-digit rates, with print media being the exception, while digital media grew the fastest at 15.1%, fueled, in part, by the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) placement opportunities from media companies like Amazon Prime and NBCUniversal’s Peacock, according to the new PQ Media report.

AI placements differ slightly from virtual brand integrations, like those placed via companies like Mirriad, as AI software allows viewers to click on integrated products and be sent to an e-commerce site to purchase the product. However, most brands are still hesitant to use the new AI tech because many of the product placements are cameos (appearing in the background), rather than brand integrations in which the actors hold the products towards the camera and/or discuss them favorably in the dialogue. There are also copyright issues if the original producers of the content are not contacted in advance for permission to use an AI placement.

The biggest issue to impact the product placement market in 2023 and 2024 were the concurrent writer and actor strikes, which led to production studios shutting down for months in the US, causing delays in domestic and international content releases that featured US-based actors and/or writers. In broadcast TV, for example, the annual new episode premiums of programs with product placements for the 2023-24 season were limited to reality shows during the important September-to-November time period, such as “The Golden Bachelor.”

New episodes of scripted programs with product integrations were pushed back to “mid-season” replacements in February 2024, such as “CSI: Las Vegas.” In the film business, studio shutdowns forced movies with product placements scheduled for release in 2023, such as “Challengers,” to be pushed back to 2024, impacting the distribution of movies with product integrations already scheduled for 2024 release, such as the sequel to “Dirty Dancing.” Production shutdowns also impacted the music video channel and actor commitments led to delays in the release of select videogame titles.

“Product placement has grown substantially during the past two decades because brand marketers have become more willing to invest in the creative integration of their products in storylines that will garner them strong brand awareness among target consumers, while creating positive brand associations and generating sales lift. While these key growth drivers will continue to favor product placement, some concerns have emerged, as expressed by PQ Media’s Global Opinion Leader Panel, that the number of placement opportunities will decline going forward, as evidenced by the 14% drop in the number of scripted programs produced for the 2023-24 season – only the second decline since ad-supported cable networks began producing original programming in 2007,” said PQ Media President & CEO Patrick Quinn. “While the strikes contributed to decrease, this downtrend was anticipated before the strikes because streaming services and cable nets had already begun to cancel low-performing programs, as profit margins dwindled due to cord-cutting and streaming video subscriptions appeared to be peaking.”

Product placement in TV remains, by far, the largest media platform category worldwide, valued at $20.62 billion in 2023. The hottest streaming TV series are driving the double-digit growth in product placement in the overall TV category, such as the 106 products placed in “The Brothers Sun” on Netflix. Meanwhile, movie integrations, the second largest platform category, generated $3.50 billion globally last year. While the number of new films produced in North America has increased from 333 in 2020 to 504 in 2023, this still pales in comparison to film production prior to the 2020 pandemic, as 792 films were released in 2019. Nevertheless, 25% of the 504 films released in 2023 featured 10 or more product placements, led by “Gran Turismo” and “Dumb Money.”

Digital media was the fastest-growing placement category in 2023, rising 15.1%, followed by films (up 13.1%), and music (up 13.0%). Brands have ratcheted up podcast integrations, such as “Electric Easy” often opening with placements like characters trying Bud Light. The print media and videogame categories posted decelerated single-digit growth in 2023.

While the US accounted for well over half of product placement spend in 2023, the rest of the world is gaining ground, with Brazil and Mexico both exceeding $2 billion in spending, Australia investing over $1 billion, and Germany and the United Kingdom approaching $1 billion.

About the Report:

PQ Media’s Global Product Placement Forecast 2024-2028, the 10th edition of the industry’s recognized performance benchmark. The Forecast is the only source to consistently define, size, analyze and project the growth of product placement spending in media. The new edition has expanded to cover 6 major media platforms and 19 media channels across all top 20 global markets. Below is a breakdown of the report’s expanded coverage of media platforms and channels:

Television/Video – Broadcast TV, Cable TV, Streaming TV;Filmed Entertainment – Theatrical Films, Streaming Films;Digital Media – Pure-Play Digital Sites, Social Media & Blogs, Influencer Sites, Virtual Placements;Videogames – Console/PC Games, Mobile Games, Internet Games;Print Media – Magazines, Newspapers, Books;Recorded Music – Music Videos, Broadcast & Streaming Radio, Podcasts, Lyrics

The Core PDF Report & Analysis delivers 264 slides of exclusive market data and insights, which is enhanced by the Deep-Dive Excel Databook that provides 5,625 datasets and over 250,000 datapoints by country, media platform and channel, covering the 2018-2028 period with five-year forecasts, exclusive rankings of the largest and fastest growing media platforms and global markets, and in-depth profiles of each major country. To Download a Free Executive Summary and Sample Datasets click: https://www.pqmedia.com/product/global-product-placement-forecast-2024-2028/.

About PQ Media:

PQ Media delivers strategic intelligence, data and analysis to the world’s leading media, entertainment and technology organizations through syndicated market intelligence reports, custom drill-down research services, and on-demand strategic consulting. PQ Media uses a proprietary econometric methodology to define, segment, size, analyze and project the growth of several hundred traditional, digital and alternative media by country, platform, channel and demographic. PQ Media also publishes the annual Global Media Forecast Series 2024 (10th edition), with each report covering one of the three aforementioned industry KPIs – Advertising & Marketing Spending; Consumer Media Usage & Exposure; and Consumer Spending on Media Content & Technology.

Media Contact

Patrick Quinn, PQ Media, 1 2039215249, pquinn@pqmedia.com, https://www.pqmedia.com

Leo Kivijarv, PQ Media, 1 2032737081, lkivijarv@pqmedia.com, https://www.pqmedia.com

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Vertical IQ Will Expand Industry Intelligence Platform with Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE) Small Business Credit Data

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RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE), the trusted source for small business lending data and Vertical IQ, a nationally recognized provider of Industry Intelligence, today announced their partnership. Through the partnership, Vertical IQ will incorporate SBFE small business credit insights into its platform, providing financial institutions with deeper context to support commercial lending decisions.

The collaboration enables banks, credit unions, and other commercial lenders using Vertical IQ to gain access to SBFE small business credit insights within the Industry Intelligence platform. Default rates, delinquencies, and credit trends by industries are just a few of the SBFE features that will be included. These insights allow financial services professionals to better understand small business borrowers and support key commercial lending activities.

“At SBFE, we’re committed to helping lenders better understand and support small businesses. Extending access to SBFE insights through Vertical IQ is another way we can deliver value to the lending community and support greater access to capital.”

     – Elisabeth MacDonald, President and CEO, SBFE

“At Vertical IQ, we believe financial institutions make their best decisions when they have access to trusted, Verified Industry Intelligence powered by the highest-quality data available,” said Bobby Martin, co-founder and CEO of Vertical IQ. “Our partnership with SBFE represents another important step in that commitment by bringing highly respected small business credit insights into our platform. By combining SBFE’s credit data with Vertical IQ’s industry expertise, we’re helping lenders gain deeper context to strengthen credit analysis, improve risk assessment, and make more confident decisions throughout the commercial lending lifecycle.”

     – Bobby Martin, Co-founder and CEO, Vertical IQ

About SBFE

SBFE is the trusted data exchange where the small business lending industry comes together to strengthen access to capital for America’s small businesses. For more than 25 years, SBFE has united lenders in a member-driven community built on trust, collaboration, and the responsible use of data. Today, SBFE securely manages one of the nation’s largest repositories of small business credit data, contributed by more than 140 member institutions, including many of the country’s largest commercial banks. This data enables highly predictive credit reporting and portfolio management solutions that help lenders make more informed decisions, manage risk, and support the financial health and growth of small businesses. By transforming shared data into trusted lending intelligence, SBFE helps its members strengthen credit decisioning and promote greater access to capital. Learn more at www.SBFE.org

About Vertical IQ

Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vertical IQ is a nationally recognized provider of Industry Intelligence. Whether discussing cash management with a local brewery or evaluating risk for a large manufacturing company, successful banks, credit unions, accounting firms, insurance organizations, and advisory firms use Vertical IQ to better understand a prospect’s or client’s business challenges before, during, and after meetings. Covering 100% of the industries that comprise the U.S. and Canadian economies, as well as more than 3,400 local economic reports, Vertical IQ equips professionals with the confidence and credibility to build stronger client relationships and make more informed decisions. Learn more at www.verticaliq.com

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CME Group Brazilian Real Futures Set New Daily Volume Record Following Election

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Record $9 billion notional traded, eleven times the year-to-date average daily volume (ADV) as market participants turned to CME Group to manage risk around the clock

CHICAGO, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, today announced that its Brazilian real (BRL) futures reached a new daily volume record of 498,498 contracts (R$49.8 billion, ~$9.2 billion notional value) on October 26, surpassing the previous record of 191,325 contracts (~$3.7 billion notional value) traded on September 28, 2026.

“Following the results of the Brazilian presidential election, clients turned to our BRL futures market to immediately manage their risk outside of Brazilian trading hours, driving all-time record volume,” said Paul Houston, Global Head of FX Products, CME Group. “Even before the onshore market opened, $2.5 billion in notional value had already traded, roughly three times the year-to-date ADV for BRL futures. With liquidity in all timezones and contracts denominated in USD, our markets are fast becoming the main venue for Brazilian real price discovery and trading outside of onshore hours, giving global participants the liquidity they need around the clock.”

In the first half of 2026, Mexican peso and Brazilian real futures and options saw a record combined average daily volume of $2.94 billion.

For more information on CME Group BRL futures, please visit https://www.cmegroup.com/articles/faqs/latam-fx-futures-frequently-asked-questions.html

As the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, energy, agricultural products and metals.  The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform.  In addition, it operates one of the world’s leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing. 

CME Group, the Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Globex, and E-mini are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.  CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc.  NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc.  COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. BrokerTec is a trademark of BrokerTec Americas LLC and EBS is a trademark of EBS Group LTD. The S&P 500 Index is a product of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC (“S&P DJI”). “S&P®”, “S&P 500®”, “SPY®”, “SPX®”, US 500 and The 500 are trademarks of Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC; Dow Jones®, DJIA® and Dow Jones Industrial Average are service and/or trademarks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. These trademarks have been licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. Futures contracts based on the S&P 500 Index are not sponsored, endorsed, marketed, or promoted by S&P DJI, and S&P DJI makes no representation regarding the advisability of investing in such products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 

CME-G 

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Vera Health Quietly Became One of the World’s Most Used Clinical Tools. Now It Has Raised $32 Million to Give Every Clinician in the World the Best Medical Knowledge in Seconds

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With a team of just 12 employees, the clinical AI company has grown largely through physician referrals, bringing total funding to $32 million

More than 800,000 clinicians across 190 countries use Vera Health, including approximately 1 in 4 physicians in Spain and Italy, with most discovering the platform through recommendations from colleagues.Threshold Ventures led Vera Health’s $28.5 million Series A, with participation from Mantis VC and SV Angel. Existing investors Y Combinator and Gradient tripled down, bringing total funding to $32 million.The investment will accelerate Vera Health’s evidence-focused clinical AI platform, expanding its ability to make global medical knowledge locally relevant and deepening partnerships with medical societies, publishers and health systems.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A year ago, a few thousand clinicians were using Vera Health. Today, more than 800,000 are, most having discovered the platform through a colleague. Every month since June, Vera has been the most downloaded clinical app in the world across the App Store and Google Play.¹ In September alone, it was downloaded more times than OpenEvidence and Doximity combined, while monthly downloads had more than tripled since February. With a team of just 12 employees, Vera has reached clinicians in 190 countries, including approximately 1 in 4 physicians in Spain and Italy, largely through word of mouth. Vera Health is a clinical AI search engine that reasons like a clinician, helping physicians find and evaluate medical evidence in seconds.

Today, Vera Health announced a $28.5 million Series A led by Threshold Ventures, with participation from Mantis VC and SV Angel. Existing investors Y Combinator and Gradient, tripled down in the round, bringing the company’s total funding to $32 million. The investment will accelerate Vera Health’s mission to close the gap between what medicine knows and what every patient receives.

Only a few months after raising its Series A, Vera already has more daily active users than it had monthly active users at the time of the raise. Clinicians went from asking Vera a few thousand questions a day to asking hundreds of thousands, every single day.

“Clinicians are the best data scientists I’ve ever met. They make the call in seconds, with more evidence than any human could ever read,” said Taieb Bennani, Co-Founder of Vera Health. “The secret to building for them is to live and breathe the problem like no one else. Everyone on our team is a clinician, or the child or sibling of one, like Maxime and me. That passion translates into every detail of the product, and when you build with that kind of obsession, the product speaks for itself, and clinicians share it with their colleagues. We don’t have the biggest team or the most money. We have the people who care the most about getting it right.”

How does Vera Health differ from general-purpose AI tools?
Clinical AI is increasingly being used to help physicians navigate complex medical questions, but the ability to generate an accurate-sounding answer does not necessarily establish whether the underlying research is reliable. Medicine now publishes a new scientific paper roughly every 20 seconds. Chatbots are built to sound confident. Vera is built to be accurate, and honest when the evidence is thin. Physicians are expected to keep up with an expanding body of research while interpreting guidelines, evaluating treatment options and making decisions for individual patients, sometimes within seconds.

Vera Health finds the evidence first, then writes the answer. Its technology searches more than 60 million peer-reviewed publications, clinical guidelines, consensus statements and drug labels, evaluating sources based on study design, level of evidence, cohort size, recency, journal quality and citation impact. Every claim is linked to its supporting research and color-coded to show the strength of the available evidence. Sometimes that color is red. A rare condition may have no large randomized trial or comprehensive guideline behind it, leaving only a small case series or a report involving a single patient. Vera Health surfaces that research while making its limitations visible, allowing physicians to assess how much weight the findings deserve.

“Medical knowledge moves too quickly for any one clinician to read, and general-purpose AI tools can make uncertain evidence sound settled,” said Maxime Allouch, co-founder, Vera Health. “Unlike other tools, we believe there’s value in making uncertainty visible. The grade shapes what Vera retrieves and writes, while the clinician brings the patient, the context and the judgment.”

Vera Health developed its approach alongside physicians who evaluate medical evidence and help write the guidelines other clinicians follow. Through its partnership with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the platform integrates ACEP clinical policies with source attribution, bringing medical society guidance directly into clinical research workflows.

“In medicine, not all evidence is equal,” said Scott M. Silvers, MD, FACEP, Chair of the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Clinical Policies Committee and former Chair of Emergency Medicine at Mayo Clinic. “A large, randomized trial and a case report should never carry the same weight, yet most AI tools blend them into the same confident answer. Level of evidence is the foundation of every guideline we write, and Vera Health is built on it.”

For Dr. Bernard P. Chang, Vera Health’s Chief Scientific Advisor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University, the importance of clinical evidence extends to how physicians evaluate patients.

“On a recent emergency-department shift, I saw a young woman with cough and shortness of breath. The symptoms could easily be attributed to a routine respiratory illness,” said Chang. “Vera Health surfaced evidence that raised my concern for pulmonary embolism, a potentially life-threatening blood clot in the lungs, and led me to broaden my evaluation. What interests me isn’t AI simply providing an answer. It’s whether it can reliably surface evidence that challenges our initial assumptions and improves clinical reasoning. That’s what we’re now evaluating rigorously, inside the academic medical centers where medicine is actually practiced.”

Vera Health’s clinical advisors also include Christopher Baugh, MD, MBA, FACEP, Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs in Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Its clinical council includes physician leaders affiliated with Mayo Clinic, Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Penn.

Why is Vera Health growing so quickly across international markets?
Bennani and Allouch grew up in families of physicians and initially developed Vera Health for their own fathers. What began with two users has since grown into a platform serving hundreds of thousands of clinicians, with physicians asking hundreds of thousands of questions each day. The company’s international growth reflects an approach built around a central reality of medicine. Medical knowledge is global, but clinical practice is local.

An emergency physician in France may follow different treatment guidelines than a physician in the United States. An oncologist reviewing a complex case may need an exhaustive evaluation of the available research, while an emergency physician needs a concise answer within seconds. Even physicians practicing the same specialty may follow different protocols depending on their institution.

Vera Health accounts for those differences by prioritizing locally relevant guidance while drawing on medical research from around the world. Through Vera Spaces, health systems can also integrate their own clinical protocols and pathways alongside national guidelines and international medical literature.

“Medicine is global, yet most tools in our space were built for a single geography,” said Allouch. “We went international from day one, because only a global view reveals what is truly local.”

The approach has helped Vera Health expand across Europe, where approximately 1 in 4 physicians in Spain and Italy and 1 in 7 in France use the platform, according to company data. Vera Health has achieved that international reach with a small team and a product that clinicians have largely discovered through their peers.

What will Vera Health’s Series A funding support next?
The financing will support further development of Vera Health’s clinical evidence infrastructure, expansion into additional healthcare markets and deeper partnerships with medical societies, publishers and health systems. The company will continue investing in locally relevant clinical guidance and tools that allow healthcare institutions to incorporate their own medical knowledge into the platform.

“In healthcare, trust is earned, not bought. Vera’s adoption among clinicians worldwide speaks to what Taieb and Maxime have built. By combining the most rigorous medical evidence with an understanding of each physician’s specialty, protocols and practice context, Vera makes the world’s medical knowledge relevant to how care is actually delivered. We believe that creates an enormous opportunity to improve global health,” said Andrew Brackin, Partner at Gradient.

“Vera is compelling because it starts with the evidence, not just an answer—helping clinicians find and assess the research behind a decision while making its strengths and limitations visible. By bringing that evidence to the point of care, Vera becomes a trusted clinical intelligence layer, not just another AI tool,” said Emily Melton, co-founder and managing partner of Threshold Ventures.

Vera Health will remain free for licensed clinicians and medical trainees worldwide as it expands access to medical evidence and locally relevant clinical guidance.

New medical knowledge takes an estimated 17 years to reach routine clinical practice, according to research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Vera Health aims to reduce the time physicians spend searching for and evaluating that knowledge, bringing relevant evidence closer to the moment clinical decisions are made.

“Our mission is to close the gap between what medicine knows and what every patient receives,” said Bennani. “Today, that gap is measured in years. We want it measured in seconds.”

About Vera Health
Vera Health is the search engine that reasons like a clinician, finding and grading evidence before showing the source, strength and limits behind every answer. More than 800,000 clinicians in 190 countries use Vera, which is free for licensed clinicians and trainees, never trains on clinicians’ questions, and is HIPAA and GDPR compliant and SOC 2 Type II certified. Founded in 2024 at Y Combinator by MIT graduates and sons of physicians Taieb Bennani and Maxime Allouch, Vera is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Threshold Ventures, Gradient, Y Combinator, SV Angel and Mantis VC.

Learn more at verahealth.ai.

¹ Download data: Appark, worldwide App Store and Google Play downloads, June through [September] 2026.

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