A television commercial donut is a template for a television commercial. It contains all the specialized elements necessary to create a finished commercial, but does not contain any specific product, pricing, or logos. It is named, somewhat humorously, after the donut, a pastry with a hole in the middle.
Traditionally, high-quality commercial television advertising has been very expensive and time consuming to produce. As a result many smaller advertisers have chosen to take advantage of the "free" or low-cost production offered by many cable television stations in exchange for purchasing airtime. Because most of these stations do intend to make a profit from the actual production, despite its low cost, it is not in their interests to go to the extra expense of producing custom 3D artwork and animations for these commercials. As a result many "local" commercials do not look very appealing compared to the national chains. Television commercial donuts allow for inexpensive customization by local cable/televison stations by providing the custom artwork in a editable form.
