Is it a show or a commercial? Increasingly, it's both, as advertisers find new ways to pitch their products inside TV programs.

• Author: Stelter, Brian
• Position: MEDIA

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On Harlem Heights, a new reality show on BET, the young stars swish Listerine, treat their allergies with Zyrtec, and sweeten their coffee with Splenda.

The products were placed within the scenes of Harlem Heights as part of a deal between Johnson & Johnson, the company that makes all three products, and cable channel BET. Through the arrangement, Listerine, Zyrtec, and Ambi skin-care products are woven into the stories of the eight young New York professionals who are profiled on Harlem Heights; in addition, Splenda and the hand sanitizer Purell are readily available as the cast go about their daily lives.

Welcome to the next generation of product placement: Brands of sodas, cars, and mouthwash are no longer just occasional props on TV shows and movies, as they were until about five years ago. Now, as part of more elaborate marketing deals, advertisers are increasingly working with writers, producers, and the networks to incorporate products into the story lines of both scripted and reality shows. Even news shows are doing it, raising difficult questions about journalistic integrity.

Examples are everywhere. Last spring, the characters on CSI: NY gathered around video-conferencing screens, ostensibly to share information about a shooting, but really to promote Cisco Systems' TelePresence video-conferencing system. In February, characters on the ABC soap One Life to Live spent the month talking up the health benefits of Campbell's soups.

In the past year, MTV has produced a series of commercials for its advertisers that look like shows. For example, a short chase movie called Get Moe was actually a series of 60-second commercials for Mountain Dew. A series of shorts called Men of Action thrust the heroes into violent confrontations that somehow promoted the virtues of KFC and Kay Jewelers.

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FAST FORWARD

One "new" type of ad--a live commercial within a show--is actually a throwback to the early days of TV. Two late-night shows--The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel Live!--have recently experimented with live commercials. Leno simply lent his starpower by introducing the ad (for Klondike bars), but Kimmel and his sidekick actually do the live ads themselves (for Nikon, Pontiac, and Quizno's), transforming the commercials into comedy skits.

Companies are turning to more sophisticated kinds of product placement on television because they're worried that viewers are no longer paying attention to their ads. TiVo and other DVRs, which let viewers fast-forward through commercials, are the primary culprits.

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About a third of U.S. households--some 30 million--currently have DVRs, but those numbers are likely to rise quickly with the changeover to all-digital broadcasting this year and the increasing number of cable and phone companies offering DVRs as part of their packages. That means millions more viewers will be able to skip right past the 30-second commercials that have long been the backbone of television's economic model.

Advertisers are scrambling to adapt, and more sophisticated product placements are one of the ways to get viewers' attention. Some companies are cutting their conventional...