Video Advertising Gets Local

The New York Times reports today on a few new video ad creation and placement providers. We’ve known about Spot Runner for a while, but it seems the idea is spawning a handful of new providers.

It’s clear that one of the advantages of Spot Runner and others is to bring television advertising within the grasp of the majority of small businesses (for which it has traditionally been cost prohibitive). But it’s also notable how this can also help national advertisers more efficiently reach local audiences.

If you bring in targeting capabilities and content volumes possible with IPTV and web delivered video, a compounding factor could be more favorable economies and a long tail effect of available ad inventory (similar to what online search did for small business and local advertising). All together, these factors bode well for small business advertisers and their ability play in the video advertising sandbox.

B&C meanwhile reports that local television revenues are up 41%. This is mostly due to growth in advertising and more small businesses in auto and real estate verticals coming around to the idea of television advertising. It will be interesting to see if this is an augmentation to, or replacement of, these businesses’ traditional newspaper and Yellow Pages ad spends.

On a more national level, eMarketer reports on an Accenture study that shows the growing interest among advertising executives for IPTV advertising and its targeting possibilities.

There is a lot of potential for transforming the local and national television advertising landscape if you look at how all these factors could converge over the next few years. Teleco IPTV rollouts, the fate of net neutrality, consumer adoption of online video, and small business adoption of video advertising, are all vital factors. We’ll continue to watch closely.