Another issue with product placement: These sponsors are used to controlling every aspect of all nine hundred frames in a thirty second commercial. It's one thing to dress a character in (say) Gap jeans, and another when Gap decides that a cast member doesn't look good in them. It's one thing for a character to drink a Pepsi on screen, and another when Pepsi decides that a Pepsi drinker wouldn't act the way the character is acting. Sure, "Seinfeld" was a huge hit, but was George Costanza living the sort of life that the Olive Garden wanted to associate with "the Olive Garden experience"? Would Burger King want a masturbator eating a Whopper? Would KFC object to an overweight character eating from their bucket?
And what if a character driving a product-placed Kia was involved in a story that required his car to break down? (And, by the way, if the network is hoping that Kia will place their cars in an episode, they won't want any other car visible, for fear of offending the sponsor. That means not just covering up a logo, but hiding the shape of a car so it's not recognizable! This happens all the time.)
These are the real world difficulties of product placement. Most people assume it's an easy fix. In fact, it's very, very tricky to pull off.
