Read Any Good Ads Lately?

Publishers have been less inclined to go quietly along with such product-pushing on the page. They became apoplectic five years ago when best-selling British novelist Fay Weldon admitted she was paid by Bulgari to name-drop the Italian luxury-goods retailer throughout her book. Not only did she do so, but she tripled the agreed-upon number of mentions and added it to the title: "The Bulgari Connection."

Advertising Age magazine called that the revival of "a time bomb ticking away in the heart of marketing" that was planted in 1989 when author Beth Ann Herman plugged a Maserati dealership in Beverly Hills throughout her novel "Power City" and was rewarded with a $15,000 book party. Even then, though, it wasn't new. In 1855, Charles Dickens wrote an advertisement for a hotel he stayed in. It was later turned into a book, and he may also have gotten a few free rides from the Pickwick carriage line for "The Pickwick Papers."

Comic book purists may have been appalled by DC Comics' launch last year of a six-part miniseries featuring a new hero who drives a Pontiac Solstice. But 30 years ago, Green Lantern was shilling Hostess fruit pies, Captain Marvel and the Incredible Hulk pushed Twinkies, and Wonder Woman rescued Hostess cupcakes.

The new generation of product placement -- like Burger King's new three-part DVD video game, Sneak King -- aims at engaging consumers in some activity. The tactics are designed to imprint a brand in a way that a 30-second TV spot, Internet pop-up ad or magazine page doesn't.

"If you have someone experience something rather than just being told something, it's much more impactful," says Patrick Courrielche, managing director of Inform Ventures, a marketing company that has held an emcee talent search for Scion, a "street expo" featuring AT&T products and an art exhibit for Lexus.

"You can talk to your children 'til they're blue in the face, but if they actually experience something, they can learn from it and take it a little more seriously," Courrielche says. "This is applying that to marketing."

With that in mind, Lexus is considering creating a podcast based on "Black Sapphire." (Smith's published books are "Moist" and "Delicious"; his latest, "Salty," will be released this summer and promoted on Lexus's Web site.)

For his part, Smith says there was little the company did to encroach on his artistic freedom in writing the serial novel, other than to question his assertion that you can't find a good taco outside of Los Angeles and to nix a sex scene.

"I wanted to have this little scene, because you can talk about how nice the seats are, how they recline, how they're really soft. And actually they have these seat coolers in the car, and they really work. I thought, fantastic, you can have hot output on the cool seats. But they thought: No . . . that was too much."