Some thing that you need to think about when it comes to product placement is that sometimes it just simply happens. What this means is that the PR person putting together the movie or TV show or publicizing the book might just find something sitting around that will actually help to complete the scene or enhance the project itself. So what they do is take the object and then just place it in the scene. Another way that public relations people will use product placement is to make a characters life seem more real to the viewers or readers. What this means is that they are going to add some little details to make the character seem real, such as what foods they like, what they drink, what they drive, etc. And in order to do this they are going to need to use actual products.

But the most common type of product placement that you are going to come across is where there is a trade off for using a certain product or there is some type of financial compensation.