Entertainment Weekly is debuting video ads in its September issue using wafer-thin screens embedded in pages to promote CBS TV shows and Pepsi.

The screen, about two inches big, roughly similar to those found on many cellphones, will start playing automatically as the page opens.

The player, developed by Americhip Inc., will be rechargeable and include a speaker.

The insert will play about 40 minutes of clips that feature returning series How I Met Your Mother, Two And A Half Men, and a preview of the network’s full fall line-up. Pepsi is promoting its diet Pepsi Max soft drink.

“As a rule, 90% of people will say they heard about new programming on television,” George Schweitzer, president of CBS’s marketing group told reporters at CBS’s New York headquarters yesterday. “It’s the first way we can get video samples into the hands of entertainment enthusiasts off the television screen.”

Copies of the Time Warner magazine will reportedly be sent only to some subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles. Entertainment Weekly has a weekly circulation of nearly 1.8 million.