Hybrid ads are the sister-mergers between product placement and regular commercials. They are what you see before episodes of Project Runway (Bluefly!), America's Next Top Model (Covergirl!) and Top Chef (uh, Sears?), telling you to visit their website or buy their products, that are conveniently used throughout the program you are watching. Sort of like a big red arrows towards all the product placement in the episode. So when Tim Gunn tells contestants to choose wisely from THE BLUEFLY DOT COM accessories wall, you can easily remember it the next time you're shopping for material to impress your own Heidi Klum with.

And as sponsors see their cash-flow dwindle and their ad-budget shrink, these interstitial placements may be the most efficient and concise way to shill your product.

"Recall ads" are natch, the commercials that are most easily remembered after a 24 hour period. So while you might scratch your head at best buy wondering what board game they played on How I Met Your Mother last night (Scrabble!), Neilsen ratings show that as long as you slap a big old Hasbro sponsorship label on the beginning of the episode, people will be buying up box sets in order to appear as if they have friends as cute as Neil Patrick Harris.

Even better news for the ad industry: these hybrid commercials work regardless of what field you're in. So Toyota, Keebler Cookies, and Travelocity can enjoy the same bump from their symbiotic show relationship as any other product, as long as they can somehow make their item correlate with the show in people's minds.

So, there's little to no chance in seeing Butterfingers hybrids before The Biggest Loser, or commercials for breathalyzers before Intervention. Actually, that second one is a pretty good marketing scheme.