The Television Industry has been experimenting with pod-busting for over a year now with little success. What is pod-busting? Well, instead of a those predictable breaks at 10 past the hour filled with eight :30 second spots resulting in an efficient four minute block of time that gave you time to change the channel, go to the kitchen and get a soda or, of course, fast forward on your TiVo, viewers were subjected this past year to advertising pods that fell in unpredictable places or didn’t exist at all; ads were scattered throughout the entire show. Apparently this was a bit of a failure as detailed in a recent NYT article. Hey, at least TV Execs were experimenting, making changes to age old ad structures and formulas, trying to hold onto precious viewers…albeit with a bit of trickery.

More promising is the plan for this upcoming season. The primary reason is a realization that ads and promotions that are somehow connected to the programming have more significant impact. Deadliest Catch advertised on Shark Week. An Allstate ad set at a wedding during Father of the Bride.

Makes sense. After all, advertising is content, just like everything else. The formula seems pretty simple to me: align content with context. Oh, and yes, the Web does this quite nicely.