Watch Your Ad In A Magazine.

What? Watch your ad in a magazine...
A Video player…magazine… WHAT?

Titled VIP Ads. Video-In-Ads. The first major use of the VIP ad format will be limited to copies of Entertainment Weekly distributed in New York City and Los Angeles.

Well this fall the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly's print edition will be embedded with a video player that will run ads for CBS shows and Pepsi.

Well it does require the magazine to do some minor modifications.

Last year Esquire magazine made headlines by putting on its newsstand covers a miniature e-paper display. It didn't do a whole lot: The small display simply repeated a message ("The future is now") before running out of power three months later. It was a fun experiment, a gimmick and something that didn’t get than repeating -- at least until e-paper can be used to create an affordable and portable complete magazine on a regular basis. Stay tuned it’s coming.

The ad comes in a heavy-paper package resembling the kind of novelty greeting cards that make noises. A roughly 5cm screen starts playing automatically as the page flips open and a small speaker is embedded below it.

CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly billed the video advertisement as the first ever to appear in a print magazine. CBS says the video player insert, made by a Los Angeles company called Americhip Inc., will be able to withstand the binding processes and mail delivery.

Ink-on-paper titles have been trying new formats to boost advertising revenue. Newspapers have done many things once considered a no-no and magazines have even put ads onto covers.

The technology for the battery-powered ads can handle about 40 minutes of video. It's a product that has been in development at Americhip for about two years. Here are some more details about the Americhip technology (see video below):

The screen, which is 2.7 millimeters thick, has a 320x240 resolution. The battery lasts for about 65 to 70 minutes, and can be recharged, believe it or not, with a mini USB cord--there's a jack on the back of it.

The screen, which uses thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) technology, is enforced by protective polycarbonate.

The video inserts will appear in some copies mailed to subscribers in New York and Los Angeles. Readers who live in Canada and everywhere else, along with newsstand buyers, won't get the video edition.

In the ad will feature characters from CBS's The Big Bang Theory, and give a how-to on navigating the different buttons that bring up more clips of additional spots includes a Two and Half Men, a sneak peek at the new CBS comedy Accidentally on Purpose and a preview of the network's fall drama slate. There's also an ad for the Pepsi Max diet soft drink.

CBS won't say how much it is paying for the spread, but the idea behind these new experiments is generally to charge a premium for advertising that has more potential to catch readers' attention.

Whether or not this catches on, it sounds like an absolutely perfect way to breath life into slumping print ad revenues. The sheer novelty of it dictates that everyone who receives one of these special copies of the magazine will assuredly devote a full hour to watching videos on the tiny screen and more time showing it off to all their friends.