I don't watch much TV, but my wife watches a lot of these shows. The product placement is fairly blatant, and the storylines themselves seem very materialistic

I don't watch much TV, but my wife watches a lot of these shows. The product placement is fairly blatant, and the storylines themselves seem very materialistic. What if this is not a replacement of advertisement as much as it is a more thoroughly integrated form of it? I mean, which would you rather be: The guy who pays for a blatant ad that is segregated from the content, or the guy with a slick PR rep who gets your product glowingly mentioned inside the content?