The multicultural collision of Ikea, indie actors,"reality" shows, and web-only vanity projects is a big step in marketing, but what about the shit it's leaving on our shoes?

Call it advertainment, though the ad industry calls these things branded webisodes. It's kinda the opposite of product placement: In this case, the stars — Illeana Douglas, Keanu Reeves, Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, and other Ikeans — are products that are placed inside other products. Like those Russian or Ukrainian nesting dolls.

The thing went viral last fall, and a second season of this virus is scheduled to infect us October 8.

But to Douglas, whose career was flagging before Ikea helped her put it back together, it's a cross between altruism and art. Ad Age says she "is no longer ambivalent about the idea of branded entertainment as a wave of the future." Hell, she's an evangelist, rationalizing it this way:

Keanu Reeves' involvement in this Ikea advertainment stuff is puzzling. I thought he escaped the matrix.