Similar to the Show

Sometimes, an advertisement will look similar to the show that is running with. This is designed to catch those who are fast-forwarding through the ad breaks.

This may be a throwback to the early days of television and radio, where the hosts of variety programs would hawk the sponsor's wares without even a break in the action.

Examples of Similar to the Show include:

• An orange juice ad featuring the skyline of New York aired in the United Kingdom during the transmission of CSI: NY.
• This is common on sporting events, especially golf, even for products not directly related to the sport in question. This often has a dual purpose of attention-grabbing and synergistic marketing.
• While Angel was sponsored by Verizon, many episodes included bumpers that showed the "Can you hear me now?" guy testing his phone in various sets from the show.
• On FM radio, commercials often imitate a "Morning Zoo"-type group of DJs talking about the product being advertised.
• Transcripts of the 1930s radio show Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, which starred Groucho and Chico Marx, include flawless segues from comedy material into advertisements for the sponsor's products: "That really knocked me for a loop." "It could have knocked you for an Essoloop!" "No, Essolube is the famous hydrofined motor oil." "And don't forget Esso, which is more powerful than any gasoline!"
• Hanna-Barbera's 1966 Alice in Wonderland special included two Rexall commercials which featured characters from the show. Watch the videos on Toon Tracker.
• A Guinness commercial occasionally airs after MythBusters, busting a myth about Guinness.
• Before the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film, a preview for the Disney Chicken Little movie started with a "Vogons destroying the world" sequence that suddenly stopped to flash the words "Don't Panic" on it...then the scene, and the "Don't", fall down as if cardboard. In fact, up to this last part, it was an exact copy of an early trailer for the Hitchhiker's movie itself. Those who knew about this trailer might have been confused as to why they were seeing an ad for the movie they were about to watch.
• The Addams Family was preceded by a trailer for Wayne's World which was set in the Addams Family graveyard.
• Those two examples were for films from the same studio. Before WALL-E, a Disney/Pixar release, is an original teaser for The Pink Panther 2 (Sony/MGM) in which Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau attempts to sneak into a showing of WALL-E.
  • There was a version of this ad for Kung Fu Panda, too, which seems to suggest that they've made more than a few variations on this ad.
• Some of these types of ads ran during the final episode of Seinfeld. Coca-Cola had one with lines of text that referred to "in-jokes" in the series (e.g., "...and start double dipping"). No punchline, no real connection to Coke, just a bunch of random references. Picture a person who randomly quotes cartoons and comedy skits with no context. This was the ad equivalent.
• An awful lot of "Don't talk in the theater" ads do this.
  • Common in UK cinemas is the Orange mobile phone network skits where they will take an upcoming movie and then put in blatant product placement for Orange. Usually something along the lines of the two marketing guys explaining to the actors how the character is motivated by free talk time, how the latest handset will help the situation or the actors looking awkward as an Orange logo is placed haphazardly into a scene. The tag line is "Don't let a mobile ruin the movie. Switch it off". See here for an example.
• Game shows in general, and Jeopardy! in particular, have been guilty of this to varying degrees when introducing the ads for their specific sponsors. On Wheel of Fortune, Vanna White will always do one of her on-location bumpers for their sponsors.
• Some radio show hosts have turned a smooth transition from their topic to endorsements into an artform. Rush Limbaugh will be on a standard rant about why the poor economy is the democrats fault and that this is why you should invest in gold! Particularly amusing are the varied ways he transitions into selling Renai Tankless Hot Water Heaters: "Perhaps [Nancy] Pelosi's heart wouldn't be as cold as ice if she invested in a Renai Tankless Hot Water Heater, capable of keeping your water warm no matter how long you use the shower!"
• In and around the series finale of Lost, Target showed a series of ads showing a situation relating to the series followed by a product sold by Target that could solve the problem easily.
• Parodied in Animalympics, where the pole vaulting sequence segues directly into a breakfast cereal commercial.
• Done in Italy for commercials around House or The Bold And The Beautiful, done never showing the actors' faces and dubbing their lines from the series' voice dubbers, so people would believe they're actually the characters from the series they're watching.