No programming is interrupted, and the only marketing content is typically something like "Brand Flakes is happy to support PBS".
You can hide behind your dictionary definition and declare yourself the victor, but you must know there is a substantive difference between them and that is exactly the point that author was making.
Also your claim isn't even true, I recall an ad for a European Boat Touring company before Rick Steve's Europe for example. The ad was clearly "this company sells this product."
It's all just another form of lifestyle ad / virtue signaling. "We support PBS and the things you care about, support us too."
aka a commercial.
ˈadvərˌtīzmənt,ədˈvərdizmənt/
noun
a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.
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As long as said 10-second intervals don't promote a product, service or event, and they simply mention that Company X supports PBS, they aren't advertisements.
https://www.google.com/search?&rls=en&q=define:advertisement...
There's an unmistakable difference between the commercials employed in commercial broadcasts vs public broadcasts.
I'm sure you can find some reduction of the concept of "commercial" that fits both commercial broadcast advertisements and underwriting posts in public broadcasts, but you'd be missing the point.
Furthermore, the discussion here isn't merely about the ads themselves; it's about the _underlying business model_ of commercial network broadcasting vs public broadcasting. Commercial networks' incentives are squarely in line with the incentives of their advertisers, but publicly-funded broadcasters incentives are more in line with their users, because their funding is derived most directly from them.