ADVERTISERS will move from 30-second commercial breaks to creating entire television programs, after the country's largest marketing group announced it had set up a division to make TV shows for its advertising clients.

STW Group has moved into what it calls ''branded entertainment'', a sign that the big end of town is eyeing TV programming as the next marketing frontier.

STW, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, boasts 70 companies and up to 1000 clients including Nestle, Westfield, Vodafone and St George Bank.

Under current regulations, a TV station does not have to disclose if an advertiser has funded a program.

Last month, Channel Seven aired a documentary that was about and paid for by McDonald's but, because the station had not received any money for the hour-long program, it was not required to disclose the fact. Seven chose to make the disclosure voluntarily at the beginning of the program.