Product Placement in Young Adult Books

Apparently, product placement doesn't stop with the small and big screen, now publishers and companies are inking deals. Before I read the NY Times article Product Placement Deals Make Leap From Film to Books (go to bugmenot for login) I thought it was a terrible idea. By the time I got to the end of the article I realized it wasn't just an issue of brand name dropping through out the book as means to push products to young adults. With this deal, P&G is not paying for product placement, but is promoting the book on its web site.

With "Cathy's Book," although Mr. Stewart has written a self-contained textual narrative, Mr. Weisman also created a series of clues that are included in a so-called evidence pack that will come with the book in a sealed plastic envelope filled with photos, post-it notes with phone numbers scrawled on them, pages from a date book, birth and marriage certificates and letters. There will also be a business card for a fictional "online consultant" at Beinggirl.com.
Hints to most of these documents are embedded in the novel, which also contains Web site addresses and phone numbers that readers can access for extra material. The telephone number on the book's cover, for example, leads to an outgoing voicemail message from Cathy.

But now, I still don't know how I feel about this. It's probably not feasible for many books to have web sites (like Vivian Lives) that would offer the same epxerienc and so it is easy to understand why they would partner with a company that could not only offer that, but promote the book. On the otherhand, it could turn into a slippery slope where copycats attempt a similar project that results in young adult books filled with references to name brand products. These situations make me think of the readers who pick up this 5 years from now, will the references be relevant, will they even care?!