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 Fox Sports will run 6-second ads during the Cowboys-Broncos game. (Photo: Craig Barritt, Getty Images) 
 
 Viewers of Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys-Denver Broncos game will see what one Fox executive told USA TODAY will soon become commonplace in the network’s sports broadcasts: The six-second ad. 
 
 T-Mobile has developed multiple six-second spots that will bookend a more traditional 30-second ad from the mobile carrier. The ads -- which appear similar to online pre-roll ads -- will run during Fox’s America’s Game of the Week broadcast that will be seen by 81% of the country. 
 
 “I think this really shows that we are not married to a certain commercial length,” Bruce Lefkowitz, executive vice president of advertising sales for Fox Networks Group, said in a phone interview. “This is a new opportunity for advertisers, since it changes how ads can run in games. We are going to expand this to Major League Baseball broadcasts and every single NFL game starting next week.” 
 
 CLOSE Viewers of the Cowboys-Broncos game Sunday will see what one Fox executive told USA TODAY Sports will soon become commonplace in the network’s sports broadcasts: the six-second ad. 
 
 Earlier this year during a presentation to advertisers, Fox hinted that it was going to experiment with ad length during games. (There are already 15-second ads mixed with occasional 60-second ads during NFL broadcasts.) The six-second ads were tested during the Teen Choice Awards broadcast by Fox last month. 
 
 For T-Mobile, the experiment with six-second ads isn’t surprising. In recent years, the company has tried to position itself as the “Un-Carrier,” heavily embracing and experimenting with social media. CEO John Legere is particularly active on various platforms, including Twitter, where he has more than 4.5 million followers. 
 
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 "We know that short-form videos perform better in digital, and that consumer attention spans are increasingly shorter," Kari Marshall, VP of media at T-Mobile, said in a statement to USA TODAY. "So applying these insights to TV, and taking what we’ve seen with shorter ads to date, we’re very excited to partner with Fox to take it a step further." 
 
 T-Mobile is no stranger to the NFL. During last February's Super Bowl, it featured three minutes worth of ads that included celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. 
 
 Lefkowitz said the ability to grab viewers’ attention via the shorter spots, especially younger viewers, was “certainly” a consideration in the creation of the six-minute ad segments. 
 
 “We have done research on Millennials and how they interact to different types of messages,” Lefkowitz said. “You don’t always need 30 or 60 seconds to reinforce a brand’s message.” 
 
 The creation of the shorter ads also comes as the NFL attempts to recover from an 8% viewership decline last year. 
 
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 The NFL worked with its broadcast partners (Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN) to cut down on commercial breaks -- although the breaks are slightly longer now -- among other changes to speed up the game. 
 
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 The pace of play did improve in Week 1 compared to the same time period last year. Only five of the 15 games in the opening weekend exceeded three hours, compared to 10 of 16 games last year. 
 
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 Visa has signed on to run six-second ads in Fox's National Football League game on Sunday and will use the shortened spot for its Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. 
 
 Visa will run one six-second spot right before kickoff and another during the game, according to Bruce Lefkowitz, exec VP-ad sales, Fox Networks Group. The host of Fox's pre-game show will intro the six-second spot before the game, while the other will run in a traditional pod within the game. 
 
 The short ad unit, first prominently championed by YouTube last year but adopted by others like Facebook in recent months, is part of Fox's strategy to figure out how to improve the TV viewing experience as it confronts competition from platforms with fewer or no commercials. 
 
 "As shorter-form ads have become more and more common in the digital ad space, consumers have become more accustomed to the format, and metrics show that they are more likely to retain the messages conveyed. It makes sense to take these learnings and apply them to the linear ad space as well," says Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation officer, Visa, in an email. 
 
 "Good creative messaging should be able to be boiled down to simple takeaways for the consumer. So, building for short-form ad units has been a great exercise for our creative teams to ensure our messaging is laser-focused and crystal-clear," he adds. 
 
 Fox is charging similar rates for its six-second spots in NFL games as it does for 15-second ads. A 30-second ad in Fox's Sunday games goes for about $775,000 this season, according to ad buyers. 
 
 Fox plans on airing a limited number of six-second spots during NFL games this season, as well as in telecasts of Major League Baseball and college football and Major League Soccer on FS1. The company is close to signing deals with other marketers for six-second ads in NFL games through week eight, Lefkowitz says. 
 
 The network group began testing the format during its "Teen Choice Awards" in August. 
 
 In theory, most TV people agree that less commercial clutter is good for both consumers and advertisers. Fewer ads increase the chances that the spots will be remembered and decrease opportunities for viewers to change the channel. But there are plenty of questions surrounding the economics. In order to maintain ad revenue while decreasing ad loads, networks have to raise prices on the inventory. Marketers are far from convinced that they should pay more to be in a program with less commercial clutter. But Fox has been aggressive in moving quickly with adopting the format to prove its value. 
 
 In the spot that will air on Sunday, Visa is asking viewers to join in Harvey relief efforts, for which the company has committed $1 million. 
 
 "We collectively decided that it didn't feel right to launch an ad on behalf of our brand in the context of what is occurring in the Gulf states," Curtin says. ||||| (CNN) NBC and Fox News said in separate statements on Monday that their networks will no longer air the Trump campaign's racist anti-immigrant advertisement. 
 
 NBC was first to announce the change, doing so after a backlash over its decision to show the 30-second spot during "Sunday Night Football," one of the highest-rated programs on television. 
 
 "After further review," NBC said, "we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible." 
 
 Fox soon followed suit. 
 
 "Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network," ad sales president Marianne Gambelli told CNN in a statement. 
 
 The ad ran about a dozen times on Fox News and Fox Business, combined, before being pulled. 
 
 Facebook also came under scrutiny for letting the Trump campaign run the ad on its platform. On Monday afternoon the company said "this ad violates Facebook's advertising policy against sensational content so we are rejecting it. While the video is allowed to be posted on Facebook, it cannot receive paid distribution." 
 
 The ad was released by the Trump campaign late last week. It vilified the thousands of migrants walking toward the US southern border, wrongly portraying them as invaders and criminals. It seemed designed to stoke fear ahead of the midterm elections and increase Republican turnout. 
 
 CNN determined that the ad was racist and declined to sell airtime for it. But other networks agreed to sell the time. 
 
 Many viewers were stunned when it aired during "Sunday Night Football," which raked in 21 million viewers this week. 
 
 This week's game had a particularly big audience as it featured a highly-anticipated matchup between two of the league's premier quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. 
 
 A spokesman for the NFL said the league played no role in the airing of Sunday's ad. 
 
 "The NFL has no approval rights regarding campaign ads," the spokesman said. "That falls to the network that is selling the advertising and airing the game." 
 
 Along with the NBC broadcast network, NBCUniversal allowed the ad to air multiple times on MSNBC before Monday's decision was made. 
 
 An NBC source said the ad was cleared by the broadcast network's standards and practices team. "We regret the decision that the ad ran at all," the source said, "and it will not air on any NBCUniversal property, locally or nationally." 
 
 Fox News did not explain why it pulled the ad. The 30-second spot was not only racist, it also contained factual inaccuracies, and it is not uncommon for networks to reject advertisements on such grounds. 
 
 Fox's decision was particularly surprising given the network's close proximity and friendly relationship with the White House. 
 
 Critics of the network say its hosts and commentators employ some of the same racist rhetoric and scare tactics that were used in the ad. 
 
 "How does Fox News square this with offering hours of the same racial fear-mongering in primetime to promote Trump (at no cost) on a nightly basis?" asked Jesse Lehrich, communications director for the progressive group Organizing for America and a former Hillary Clinton spokesman. 
 
 On Twitter, Brad Parscale, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, ignored the decision by Fox to pull the ad. 
 
 Instead, Parscale lambasted NBC, CNN, and Facebook and said the "#FakeNewsMedia" was "trying to control what you see and how you think." 
 
 A little while later, the president was asked about the controversy by a reporter. He said "I don't know about it. I mean, you're telling me something I don't know about." He added: "We have a lot of ads, and they certainly are effective based on the numbers we are seeing." 
 
 When asked about the offensive nature of the ad, Trump said, "Well, a lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive a lot of the times." 
 
 People familiar with the matter told CNN that the advertisement was not submitted to either CBS or ABC, so those networks didn't have to decide whether to sell the airtime or not. 
 
 CNN had to make the decision on Friday when the ad was submitted there. 
 
 The next day, Donald Trump Jr. complained on Twitter that CNN "refused to run" the advertisement.
– Having already killed everything from golf to Applebee's, it looks like millennials have their sights set on the 30-second ad spot. AdvertisingAge reports Visa ran two six-second ads during an NFL game on Fox last Sunday. And T-Mobile will follow suit during this Sunday's Dallas Cowboys game on Fox, according to USA Today. The six-second spots, which Fox first experimented with during the Teen Choice Awards last month, "appear similar to online pre-roll ads." And one Fox executive says they're about to be commonplace on the network: "This is a new opportunity for advertisers, since it changes how ads can run in games. We are going to expand this to Major League Baseball broadcasts and every single NFL game starting next week." Six-second ads were first pushed by YouTube before being adopted elsewhere on the web. A Visa executive says research has shown viewers remember the messaging better in short bursts, and that Fox executive says the six-second ads could appeal to millennials and their shorter attention spans. "We know that short-form videos perform better in digital and that consumer attention spans are increasingly shorter," a T-Mobile executive adds. Thanks to cord-cutters and DVR's ability to fast-forward through commercials, Fox had little choice but to try something new, Fortune reports. Fox has said it may insert the six-second ads into down moments of the games themselves, which could make them both harder to skip and allow the actual commercial breaks to be shorter—a bonus for viewers.