MediaBuyerPlanner: According to Nielsen's Product Placement tracking service, Coca-Cola ranked the highest for overall product placements during prime time in the first quarter, MediaPost reports.

Coke acquired 2,551 "product occurrences" in the first quarter of 2006 with 98 percent of them on the Fox hit American Idol.

On Idol, Coca-Cola logos are stamped on cups which are shown near the judges throughout the show. In second place was 24-hour fitness which accumulated 399 "product occurrences" most of which occurred during NBC's reality show The Big Loser.

That helped "Loser" follow "Idol" with the second-most placements among shows in 1Q, with 945, Media Daily notes. Other sponsors of American Idol ranked as follows: Nike 304 placement and Cingular Wireless ranked fourth with 273 placements. Ford, the third top-tier Idol sponsor, failed to make the top 10.

The success of placements has led companies to abandon 30-second commercials to intertwine their products into the plots and dialogues of some of TV's prime-time shows. Earlier research from Nielsen Media Research showed that the number of placements rose 30 percent last year to 108,261.

According to recent research, almost 50 percent (48.9 percent) of senior marketing executives report paying for an editorial or broadcast placement.

An analysis of brand appearances on network prime-time TV in the fourth quarter of last year by TNS Media Intelligence, showed that nearly 11 percent of all programming minutes include a brand reference - with some shows having more minutes of product placement than TV commercial time.

According to that study, the average show containing four minutes 25 seconds of product placement and 17 minutes and 35 seconds of local and national TV commercials