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If an ad is really entertaining, you don't zap it. You might even go out of your way to see it.

The television industry is, not unjustifiably, petrified by the zapping phenomenon. Ten million households in the U.S. choose TV programs by using video-on-demand services offered by cable companies, but the category has yet to catch on with advertisers. Reason: a presumption that on-demand viewers are particularly likely to fast-forward past the ads. What's the solution?Make ads that are so entertaining, or so useful, that people want to watch them.

In Philadelphia marketers are sampling what may be the future of user-initiated TV advertising. There, 745,000 digital cable subscribers can learn more about products by volunteering to view long-form ads on Comcast from General Motors, Reebok and Wachovia. And surprise, surprise: Viewers are tuning in, according to a new on-demand tracker.

Rentrak, a small Portland, Ore. software company, has developed a measurement system that monitors what catches the attention of these customers. With help from Rentrak, GM learned that long-form ads for its car brands, including Cadillac Escalade and Hummer, were viewed 125,000 times over 12 months and that viewers stuck around for an average 3.4 minutes.

This is a big deal. The number of on-demand viewers is expected to quadruple in five years, and marketers are trying to create and place ad messages that these engaged TV viewers will want to watch. Rentrak Chief Paul Rosenbaum, 62, thinks he can turn user-initiated viewing into a measurable ad vehicle: "This will make advertising accountable on the on-demand platform."

Rentrak uses transaction processing software to analyze reams of viewer data from four cable companies representing 10 million households that have video-on-demand--some people use it; some don't. Its system breaks out the data many ways, including total on-demand orders, most-watched programs and user-initiated ads.

For now Rentrak provides viewership analysis to cable companies for free in exchange for the raw data. Rosenbaum plans to start selling Rentrak's system to TV execs this summer. Soon after, he will peddle it to advertisers, sharing that revenue with cable companies and perhaps programmers.

Some industry players are titillated. "Measuring and monitoring digital delivery of content for content providers, content distributors and advertisers is the future of advertising," says HDNet founder and billionaire Mark Cuban, who in December paid $4.5 million for 500,000 shares of Rentrak.

But will ad tracking give this company some longevity? Publicly held Rentrak, founded as a franchised video-store chain in 1980, makes 80% of its revenue (which was off 9% last year to $78 million) leasing DVDs, videocassettes and videogames on a revenue-sharing basis to 5,000 video rental outlets. With that business threatened by pay-per-view and video-on-demand, Rosenbaum, who took over the company in 2000 after a nasty proxy fight, is eager to diversify. Rentrak started tracking movie theater ticket sales for movie studios in 2002.

But its leap into video-on-demand measurement may not go as smoothly. VNU-owned Nielsen Entertainment and Nielsen Media Research plan to measure on-demand data next year. To compete, Rentrak must persuade more cable companies to give it household viewing information, as Comcast, Cablevision, Charter and Insight are starting to do. Time Warner Cable, the nation's second-largest player, so far plans to analyze its own.

"Rentrak is at the mercy of the operators," says Timothy Hanlon, a senior vice president at Publicis Groupe Media Ventures.