Old dogs can learn new tricks

Pressured by Madison Avenue and Gen Y viewers with short attention spans, CW is shattering the typical TV ad model for a new one called "cwickies," according to Ad Age.

During CW's "Friday Night Smackdown," EA will run three 10-second ads, each of which will appear as the first ad of each commercial break. This is one example of how cwickies operate.

And that's just the beginning of the mediabuy. Sandwiched between cwickies are "isolated" ad breaks that contain only one EA commercial. There's a 60-second spot, and near the end, a 90-second trailer promoting EA's "Madden NFL 08," harking back to the days when TV programs had a single sponsor.

Media buying agency MediaVest has been trying to pitch new formats to networks. Among them: adding advertiser logos at the bottom of the screen during a program, and running a commercial in half a TV screen while programming continues in the other half.

Yet one problem lies in executing these new formats: they're labor-intensive. They are also designed to work with a particular program, which means they cannot be reused in other programs, adding to production expense.