• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 6, 2015

Many media executive believe native advertising on digital sites is a close relative of brand entertainment marketing efforts on traditional TV.

But if you are in the TV brand entertainment business, you may be breathing a sigh of relief when you read a story about how ad blockers could be stopping native advertising on digital platforms.

In TV, fast-forwarding and commercial skipping may still be a challenge. But then some areas -- like video on demand, where viewers can’t commercial-skip -- have marketers feeling they may have a leg up on the whole ad-avoidance issue.

Not only that, but marketers are getting more sophisticated in existing branded entertainment efforts. USA’s “Playing House” upped the stakes over the summer, adding in comedic content around its VOD offerings from its show co-creators/stars, Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham. The pair, in character, used a less heavy-handed approach for Toyota, Samsung and Comcast Corp (which owns USA Network parent NBCUniversal).

That’s the good news. The bad? As usual, this stuff takes a lot of work to put together -- in production, writing, most importantly, long lead times.

Watching “Playing House,” I hesitated just a bit, trying to figure out where this content was going — and whether or not to hit the fast-forward, er, mute button on the remote.

You don’t even need VOD content: The vast majority of TV branded entertainment efforts have plenty of exposure embedded in traditional scripted and unscripted shows, which includes the decent scale marketers look for: people using branded smartphones, or driving branded name-plated automobiles.

Traditional TV advertising/marketing executives might then show some calm when one brings up digital ad-blocking issues. That is, until the next big consumer TV innovation hits.