The New York Times has an interesting article today about how the CW network plans to offer advertisers two more ways to try holding the attention of viewers during commercial breaks.

One idea is to run quickie commercials of only five seconds each. The other is to schedule a series with no commercial breaks at all, and instead incorporate sponsors’ products into each episode.

The proposals are the most recent to be advanced by the major networks, broadcast and cable, as they grapple with the problem of keeping viewers from changing channels during commercials — or, if the viewing is being done on digital video recorders, from fast-forwarding through the spots.

The need for the networks to “engage with viewers to stay with the commercials,” as Dawn Ostroff, president for entertainment at CW, described it, is intensifying for a couple of reasons. One is that Nielsen Media Research is about to change the way it reports the ratings data long used by advertisers to decide where to run commercials. On May 31, Nielsen is to start measuring the viewership of the commercials as well as the programs.

The other reason to tinker with traditional commercial breaks is the penchant of DVR owners to skip through spots when they play back recorded programs. That problem is getting worse as more households acquire DVRs.

The interest in “quickie” commercials and sponsored product placement is smart, and something that commercial video podcasters should evaluate, too. People are choosing Internet video because it lets them avoid commercials and make better use of their time. Instead of fighting this and tacking long ads onto Web videos, advertisers and publishers need to experiment with short, smart ads that are contextual and relevant to the viewer. This isn’t as obvious or as easy as it sounds, though, so the time to start experimenting is now.