The Daily Prophet, Harry Potter

As recently as the latest Harry Potter film, moving pictures in print newspapers were something out of science fiction.  Now just that is set to happen in real life.

Next month Entertainment Weekly will publish video ads in copies going out to subscribers in New York and Los Angeles.  Part of a joint marketing experiment by CBS and Pepsi, the ads will run on wafer-thin screens embedded in the magazine’s pages, and will activate as soon as the reader flips the page.

This is something many of us couldn’t have foreseen, in real life, even just a few years ago.  But it’s just one more way marketers are pushing the envelope with new media.