CBS, Pepsi Max put video in some magazine ads

NEW YORK -- The video ad, which will appear in Los Angeles and New York subscription copies of the Sept. 18 Entertainment Weekly (out Sept. 11), is part of a bigger CBS campaign for the fall season that starts Sept. 21. The remainder of the magazine's press run — its fall TV preview issue — will have traditional print advertising for the shows.

The player technology, using a flexible, thin, plastic screen, was created by Americhip. When the two-page ad opens, the sound is akin to one of those talking, musical greeting cards. Also built into the ad is a 2-inch-by-1.5-inch video screen.

The player will contain 40 minutes of video and can be replayed for about six hours.

The companies would not say how many copies of the magazine will have the video ad or what the promotion will cost.

Pepsi Max joined the promotion because the shows' audiences match up well with Max's 25-to-39-year-old male demographic, and those consumers like new technology. Entertainment Weekly's fall preview issue also was a natural, says Frank Cooper, vice president of marketing at Pepsi-Cola North America. "When we added those three things up, it felt like a good fit."

"It's a way of trying to get out there and reach people," says George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing. "It's a rule that 90% of people say that they hear about new programming on TV. It's the first time we can get video sampling off the TV and into the hands of entertainment enthusiasts."

Entertainment Weekly was happy to take the ad. Magazine ad revenue fell 21% for the first half of the year, while ad pages fell nearly 28%, according to Magazine Publishers of America. Ad revenue for Entertainment Weekly fell 28%, and the magazine's ad page total fell nearly 32%.