Hey, you got your video in my magazine!

Last year Esquire magazine made headlines by putting on its newsstand covers a miniature e-paper display, much like the one on the Amazon Kindle. It didn't do a whole lot: The small display simply repeated a message ("The future is now") before running out of power three months later.

Fun experiment, but arguably more of a gimmick than anything worth repeating -- at least until e-paper can be used to create an affordable and portable complete magazine on a regular basis.

Now the magazine Entertainment Weekly is upping the ante. With its September 18 issue, EW will embed a video advertisement in select issues of the magazine as part of an ad for both Pepsi Max and CBS's fall prime-time TV lineup.

How are they pulling that off? The tiny video display, developed by Americhip, is 2.7 millimeters thick, has a 320 x 240 pixel resolution, and a battery that offers a little over an hour of running time. If an hour of watching little Pepsi ads isn't enough, you can even recharge the battery via USB and watch them all over again. Storage built into the display can pack in about 40 minutes of video.

Unfortunately you'll have to meet a strict set of guidelines if you'd like to get a copy of the issue: The version of the magazine with the video is being sent only to subscribers in New York and Los Angeles. Readers who live everywhere else, along with newsstand buyers, won't get the video and will instead have to watch commercials on the 42-inch TVs in their living rooms.

Whether or not this catches on, it sounds like an absolutely perfect way to advertise your product. The sheer novelty of it dictates that everyone who receives one of these special copies of the magazine will assuredly devote a full hour to watching videos on the tiny screen (and showing it off to all their friends), even though the content amounts to nothing but advertisements. Those who follow in EW's footsteps may not have the same success, but for this outing at least, I'm predicting big numbers for CBS this fall.