Pricy Video Ads This Week's Print Savior

Some folks in CBS's marketing department must be patting themselves on the back today over their embedded video ad appearing in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly. The ad features a tiny video screen that lets readers watch 40 minutes of programming to promote the network's Pepsi-sponsored Monday-night block.

The stunt is already gaining press attention: the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg TV have all reported on it.

Whether or not it helps CBS attract viewers, this thing is sure to sell a ton of magazines for EW, which has been subject to a whisper campaign since last year after a 19 percent decline in ad pages and layoffs hit the magazine. A tiny embedded TV! Who wouldn't want to see that? We're gonna run out to the newsstand and buy a copy of the magazine as soon as it hits!

Actually, according to The Wrap, the ad is being placed in subscription copies only. So forget a newsstand bump for the magazine. (Cue: Let's Make a Deal "zonk" sound effect.)

This is the exact opposite of what Esquire did last year with its Ford-sponsored E-Ink cover: 100,000 copies of the 75th Anniversary issue were sent only to the newsstand, forcing subscribers to plunk down six bucks for an extra copy just to experience the tiny, unimpressive (but oh-so flat) screen embedded in its cover. That got the magazine a ton of publicity but only a small increase in newsstand sales (129,869 issues versus an average of about 107,000 according Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers). But if the plan was to get geeks excited and have them look favorably upon an old media property, the magazine and its partners mostly handed tech watchers an opportunity to mock them. "Blinking disappointment," groused Gizmodo; "a pathetic disappointment," boingboing Gadgets concurred.

Reviews aren't out yet on the EW-CBS version, although in a separate Wrap post, Media Alley blogger Dylan Stableford called the ad, "relatively cool, as far as these things go—though I doubt it will impress anyone with a video-enabled iPod or iPhone."

So, besides the attention from the press, what's the point of this ad? The Wall Street Journal quoted an executive at Time Inc. who said that the cost of the ads would be "in the 'low teens'" per copy, an expenditure that hardly makes sense in an era in which we're surrounded by screens big and small. It seems foolish to spend that kind of money to create another one just to loop a 40 minute commercial (basically an electronic press kit), when CBS and Pepsi could have created an exclusive iPhone app or a special website for a lot less.

But then we wouldn't all be talking about it today, would we?