Product Placement

Product placement has been around for a long time in novels and movies and more recently in television shows. It happens so often now that it is hardly recognizable.  In movies is where it is most commonly noticed.  Some early examples include the film The Garage (1919) which featured a Red Crown Gasoline sign hanging on the wall. Moving forward a bit, a more obvious example appeared in a Marx brothers film Horse Feathers (1932) when life savers (candy) are thrown off of a boat where a woman is unable to swim.
The practice of product placement became more mainstream in the 80s when Hershey's payed a million dollars to have their product of Reece's Pieces to be in the movie E.T. Another very famous example of product placement that is seen throughout the entire film is in the movie Cast Away (2000) in which Tom Hanks is a FedEx employee who is in a plane wreck which causes him to be stuck on an island and he uses the FedEx packages that are washed ashore to survive. 
There are tons of more examples of product placement in movies and television that are happening in this day and age and they have gotten so good at it that the placement seems natural and you may hardly realize that someone payed to have their product show up in the movie or show.  In the movie The Yesman (2008) I did not realize how much product placement was in the movie until the second time that I watched the movie.  It is quite blatant product placement and there are multiple products that show up during the movie.