Product placement is entering a golden age - a push towards seamless 'native advertising' and ad-breakless subscription streaming services like Netflix means that we are seeing a lot more products grabbing screen time on our favourite shows.

Netflix invested up to $100m in the first two series of the political drama - and fans were quick to highlight the degree of product placement featured in the show.

This viral image from the first series shows nine Apple products on, and fully illuminated in one shot.

This ham-fisted reference to a Sony's Playstation Vita also got a lot of attention. The dialogue begins: "Is that a PS Vita?" and ends "I have a console at home I play sometimes to relax. I oughta get one of these for the car."

Concave Brand Tracking, a firm who specialise in analysing brand presence in entertainment content has finished working out which brands got the most screen time in the latest series of House of Cards.

The top ten most featured brands are:

Apple
IWC
Chevrolet
Washington Nationals
Avaya
Cartier
Nokia
Samsung
Blackberry
Dell

Here's its breakdown of brand representation across each of the three series:

This slightly different index tracks the most visible brands in House of Cards:

Different characters have their own favourites:

The research divides the presence of products into five categories - close-up, obvious, subtle, discreet and background.

Less than 10 percent of the screen time given to products is classified as obvious or close-up.

While the show was initially Apple heavy - Samsung has seen its presence increase significantly, it gets almost as much time on screen as Apple in the third season.

Product placement falls into a grey area between 'entertainment' and 'advertising' - part of the power is that it blurs the line between the two.

House of Cards' credits offer no mention of product placement - and Media Rights Capital, its production company, has offered no comment on the matter.

Netflix insiders told tech news site, Engadget that Apple did not have a formal agreement with the show - the screen time is seemingly given as a thank you for providing products and services to the show.

Apple courted controversy when a full episode of ABC's hit comedy, Modern Family centred around one of the characters buying an iPad - and another episode was shot entirely on iPhones, iPads, and Macbook pros.

Again, in this case it was said that Apple did not pay for product placement - but it did provide services to the show.