Pepsi gives readers a taste of the future with Harry Potter-style ad

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This article heralds the new media space to watch out for: magazine video ads! Will this new technology catch on?

By Kenneth Li in New York

Published: August 20 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2009 03:00

When Entertainment Weekly readers open the magazine next month, they will discover people talking to them from a wafer-thin video screen built into a printed page in a marketing experiment that highlights the radical new strategies advertisers are employing to reach consumers.

The full-motion ad is made possible by technology from a US company called Amerchip that works much like a singing greeting card and recalls the moving pictures of the "Daily Prophet" newspaper of the Harry Potter films.

The cost of the promotion from CBS, the US broadcaster, and Pepsi, the soft drink maker, was not disclosed. However, magazine industry executives estimated the ad would come at a high cost at a time when media companies around the globe face a severe decline in advertising revenue.

"It's part of the future - a way to engage consumers in new and surprising ways," said George Schweitzer, president of CBS marketing group. "How do you sample a drink? You give them a taste."

CBS and Pepsi's promotion will feature a six-page print advertisement in the magazine that will play a video promoting the Monday night autumn television programming line-up.

The promotion will appear in copies to subscribers of the magazine in the New York and Los Angeles area. It has not been decided exactly how many of Entertainment Weekly's 1.8m circulation will receive the video ad version.

Although the companies declined to discuss the cost of the promotion, one magazine industry executive familiar with the technology estimated the ad on 100,000 copies would cost in the low seven-figure range.

On that basis, the cost of one full-page ad page for an advertiser in Entertainment Weekly would be many times higher than 9 cents per regular page, based on the magazine's current rate card.

Although it remains unclear if the technology will catch on with other marketers and magazines, the magazine industry has continued to seek new technology to lift the moribund print sector, which has been hit with a severe decline in ad revenue and slipping circulation.

Esquire, a men's magazine published by Hearst, last year created a cover for its 75th anniversary issue built with an E Ink screen, the same technology used in Amazon.com's Kindle reader, that generated significant buzz.

Find the article on the website of Financial Times