Last week was back to school for my two daughters, which means I was right back into the habit of making them breakfast in the morning. When I pulled the jug of milk out for their cereal on Tuesday, I noticed something new and unexpected: an ad for Oreo cookies where I would usually expect to see the usual milk-brand package logo. I grabbed my iPhone and snapped the photos above. It seems many other people were waking up to this new media channel, as The New York Times featured it in an article on August 27. It is an interesting test case in “new media” and makes for a blog post that I hope you dear readers will weigh in on.

The rationale for milk-jug advertising makes a lot of sense from a traditional marketing perspective, of course. There are millions of gallons of milk that appear in grocery-store aisles and home refrigerators each day. That’s many billions of impressions that have gone uncapitalized on, until now! With people increasingly ignoring or avoiding traditional advertising media such as newspapers and TV, this is a viable alternative for eyeball harvesting. Because people drink an average of 20 gallons of milk each year and often leave it out on the counter or at the table during breakfast, this makes for a very long-term exposure.

It can also be very relevant to advertise on milk cartons. One of my coworkers pointed out that his grocery store has placed a display of Oreos right across from these milk ads. The New York Times reports that milk ads can be customized by type of milk—say, higher-end product ads for low-fat milk, which people with higher incomes tend to choose. And because kids drink a lot of milk it’s an easier way to connect with a generation that grew up with one finger on the DVR skip button. Ads are starting to show up on single-serve milk cartons at schools, and Disney and Build-A-Bear have already gotten on the bandwagon. No wonder there’s already at least one advertising company with a specific focus on selling milk-carton media. The firm, BoxTop Media, ran a study that showed a large brand got a 4% to 6% increase in sales.

Despite the new hype around this old/new media idea, I don’t think it has much of a future. New places to put your interruptive ad represent a fight against the grain and offer only temporary sales gains at best. Last year I wrote about how Zappos was advertising on airport security bins, for example. These ads are temporarily cute and stand out the first few times you see it, but over time people just learn to tune out the new ad space. And the ad networks that quickly form around them do not limit their space to clever and relevant marketers; rather they will “monetize” these impressions to whomever is willing to pay, which further deteriorates any hope for the new medium.

I also wonder about potentially negative consequences. A key problem with mass interruptive advertising is that people increasingly feel offended when it comes at them unwanted. In this case, imagine the parent who puts milk into the grocery basket and hears a child say, “Oh, Mom, can we get some Oreos?” That moves from mere interruption to a negative externality, and it could lead to a very poor brand impression for life, if not an all-out boycott campaign. Today’s social-media tools make this much, much easier for consumers to take actions like this.

Switching around among new interruptive media might be a viable strategy for some brands, but I doubt it would work for many. Instead, why not choose to create marketing that is more meaningful to customers’ lives? Imagine what a great brand such as Oreo could to do make its product more fun, engaging, and buzz-worthy. Perhaps taking a chapter from My M&Ms and allowing customers to buy personalized cookies. Let us choose the colors of cookies and cream, inject different flavors or designs, and miniaturize, double-, or triple-stuff ‘em. That’s just one minute of thinking and one possible avenue. But I’m sure that the Oreo team could come up with a lot more meaningful ideas based on their years of experience and customer understanding. And if they are looking for more ideas we’re always here to help.