Who decides? The New Middle.

Marketing dollars are getting spent on product placement (Panasonic provides plasma screens to Tony Danza, Pontiac gives cars to Oprah). Marketing dollars are also moving from magazines (stagnant) to adwords and online media (skyrocketing). Marketers are busy building viral campaigns, funding blogs, and yes, by the way, investing in products that are cool enough to actually blog about.

But who's deciding?

My guess is that this is not an organized, top down effort led by the fancy CMO or VP of Marketing. I think it's all happening around the edges while the middle (TV etc.) implodes.

This is accidental and random and it's going to get ugly, fast.

I wonder how long before smart marketers realize the new middle of the marketing department is all that extra stuff.