Days of Our Product Placement

I've said time and again, I don't watch much regular TV.  I watch a lot of clips on the internet, and DVR'ed episodes of shows that I do enjoy.  I am weird.  I like commercials.  I often wonder how they are targeted for the audience that might be watching the show in the area I am in.  It's very interesting to me.  What's Really Interesting are the ads that come on the local New Hampshire and Rhode Island Channels after the news.  "Hi, Want To Chat With Local Singles?"

I have never enjoyed "soap operas."  I don't understand them, they are beyond my scope of social understanding.

There's quite a history, however, of the Soap.

Recently, some soaps have been called out on obvious product pimping.  (Not unlike The Biggest Loser, which I don't watch at all, but when I do, it's to see the product whoring.)

Check these for example, WITH FULL COMMERCIALS WRITTEN INTO THE SHOWS:

All of these products, found at Wal-Mart!  Bing!

Who do they think they are kidding?  Or does it matter?  Do women (target soap audience, young stay at home women... older women that have been watching since the beginning of time...example, my husband's 70something year old aunt, watches one of these soaps daily, tapes it on the VCR we gave her like 12 years ago...) take this literally?

But, perhaps it's because the soap hasn't been infiltrated yet?

"Derided by critics and disdained by social commentators from the 1930s to the 1990s, the soap opera is nevertheless the most effective and enduring broadcast advertising vehicle ever devised. It is also the most popular genre of television drama in the world today and probably in the history of world broadcasting: no other form of television fiction has attracted more viewers in more countries over a longer period of time."  (Allen)

Is this cheaper than placing an advertisement during the show?  

OR -- is this BECAUSE everyone DVR's and fast-forwards through the commercials?  

I understand that the companies might want to get the products out in front of more eyeballs, since typical commercials during daytime shows are ignored, but PLEASE.  Really?

Is there not a smoother way of sneaking your whole grains into TV time?  I mean, as a blogger, I am inundated with offers to promote the same products, from the same companies, including Cheerios, but we are required to make disclosures, and separate the fact from the fiction.

What if they did this during the Superbowl?  COOL!  Everybody stops on the field, to drink a Bud?  And, then, FLASH MOB?