As MTV enters the upfronts fray, pitching advertisers on its awesome new slate of reality sludge involving MySpace celebrities and stereotypes of black men, it's also trying to bait 'em with a new ad scheme: "podbusting," a buzz word that translates as "ads that mimic actual TV programming to confuse the viewer into not TiVo-ing through your pitch."

"We’re looking to redefine the commercial experience," says John Shea, MTV and VH1's integrated marketing head. Adds Dario Spina, Shea's counterpart at Comedy Central and Spike: "We want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content."

Brill! How else to keep the kids' waning attention span but by fooling them into thinking an ad for McDonald's is actually a Justin Timberlake music video. Oh, wait.

Okay, so this isn't entirely new, but MTV's brands do plan on upping the ante by about a million.

But the pseudo-commercials are MTV’s boldest move. In one of the most elaborate pseudo-commercials, a young designer shows how she comes up with her fashions in a three-and-a-half minute movie that dovetails perfectly with the young female audience for “The Hills,” even as it celebrates the designer’s association with Target stores.

MTV is even keeping the live action from its “TRL” program on view while a commercial is running, using a screen-within-screen technique.

One more example is “C.S.I. Guys,” a series of short movies that have played on the Spike channel’s repeats of the “C.S.I.” crime series. The far less professional C.S.I. team in Spike’s commercials gets to the scenes of murders only to be distracted from the task by a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee or the aroma of a Papa John’s pizza.

“Viewers keep watching right through the commercial,” Mr. Spina said, adding that “good commercial content is good content.” [NYT]

But who are we kidding — this has been going on in magazines on a regular basis in recent years. Try getting through an issue of The New Yorker without some company using the magazine's signature cartoon in part of its ad. You don't care if the illustration is from a car company's marketing department; if the caption is funny, you're gonna laugh just the same.