The UK is to ban product placement, a blow to the advertising industry and commercial broadcasters.

Andy Burnham, culture secretary, said the government had an economic interest in protecting standards in UK broadcasting because they were "part of Britain's brand when it comes to world markets".

"Here and now, I do want to signal that I think there are some lines that we should not cross - one of which is that you can buy the space between the programmes on commercial channels, but not the space within them," Mr Burnham told a media seminar in London.

He also said he would not permit partisan news coverage in the UK in the style of Fox News in the US.

And in comments that may alarm the digital media industry, he suggested that the government should have a role in ensuring the same standards were met on the internet as on television and radio.

"If a clip on YouTube gets a million hits, it is akin to broadcasting and it doesn't seem to me to be too difficult to have an alert on that clip, an alert for violence or for sex," Mr Burnham said.

His opposition to product-placement will cause angst in ITV, the UK commercial broadcaster, where senior executives have exploited the possibilities involved in allowing advertisers to pay for their products to be included in high-profile, mass audience programmes such as Coronation Street , the long-running soap opera.

Product placement allows advertisers to counter the habit of viewers of skipping through commercial breaks by using personal video recorders.

For ITV, it has offered the possibility of renewed revenue by exploiting its remaining strength in a fragmenting TV market - its ability to reach large audiences on a regular basis.

Ofcom, the telcoms regulator, has estimated the value of product placement to UK markets would be about £35m after five years. Companies such as Media-edge:cia, owned by WPP, say it will be far greater.

Andy Duncan, chief executive of Channel 4, which is state-owned but funded commercially, said he was un-comfortable with product placement. "If, say, Nestlé wants to pay to put their products in a storyline, they will want to have a say in that storyline. For a limited upside, it presents a risk of compromise that may be too high a price to pay," he said.

The question of product placement has arisen because of a European Commission directive on audio-visual industries, which requires member states to say by the summer whether they will permit product placement.