The term “Advertainment” has come to represent the merging of advertising and entertainment. It takes one of two primary forms: advertainment or branded entertainment. The aim of advertainment is to make ads themselves so entertaining, or so useful, that people want to watch them. It’s advertising by invitation rather than by intrusion. Branded entertainment (or brand integrations ) involves making the brand an inseparable part of some other form of entertainment. The most common form of branded entertainment is product placements—imbedding brands as props within other programming. In all, advertisers paid an estimated $1.2 billion on product placements in 2009, up 30 percent from the previous year. The nature of the placement can vary widely. It might be a brief glimpse of a Starbucks coffee cup sitting on a table on HBO’s Entourage or the judges on American Idol drinking out of Coca-Cola cups. Or it might involve scripting products into the theme of the TV program ... or a feature film [ndr]
from "Principles of Marketing" | Real marketing - Madison & VIne: the new intersection of advertising and entertainment. ( P.Kotler, G. Armstrong - XIII Edition , 2010 - Pearson Prentice Hall)