Ads Becoming Smaller and Less Obvious

The New York Times reports on two marketing trends. "The Online Publishers Association released a study showing that mobile Internet use was on the rise, as was acceptance of mobile advertising," reports Eric Pfanner. While "the publishing group's numbers seem surprisingly high when compared with other recent surveys of Web access by mobile phone users," mobile marketing "could be a big thing simply because the potential audience size is enormous." Nokia recently announced "new services to increase mobile advertising." For television, the trend is to make commercials seem more like programs and less like ads, reports Stuart Elliott. "We want to bring the audiences right to the commercial so they don't feel they've gone into the commercial," explained ABC's Michael Shaw. The CW network "is selling commercials that resemble programs, with the sponsors' products incorporated into the plots." VH1 has "Showstoppers," which intersperse "program snippets and [ad] spots." General Electric is producing commercials for "new-media outlets like video on demand and the Internet, which bear titles like 'G.E. One-Second Theater' and 'G.E.'s Imagination Theater,'" named to evoke the old "General Electric Theater" shows hosted by Ronald Reagan.