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Online Video Advertising:
Local Video Ads: New Advertising Opportunities for Small Businesses and Ad Agencies
Video advertising on local broadcast TV and cable TV affiliates is attractive, but cost-prohibitive for most local businesses. However, advertising your products or services via video on the web, on such sites as online business directories and newspaper web sites, is surprisingly doable and cost-effective. In fact, video advertising on the Web is within reach of most small businesses' budgets.
In the past couple of years, web-based video has become a staple of online users' experiences. In fact, the awareness and popularity of YouTube has permeated the collective web experience for any regular user of the Internet.
Experts believe that local online video advertising is poised to become the next must-have format for businesses. While one reason is simple economics, there are other just as compelling reasons. In addition to its balance sheet value, virtual video advertising is more effective in reaching a broad segment of consumers while at the same time, allowing businesses to target their ads to specific customers.
Distribution Channels for Local Video Ads
Internet Yellow Pages, City Search and other local web directories have long served as online advertising vehicles for local businesses. Internet Yellow pages and City Search have now begun to experiment and are already rolling out services that are targeted to producing, placing and serving video ads within their local directory business profile listings, expanding their advertising format from static banner advertising, to include online video advertising. In fact, these online directory listings are fast becoming viable distribution channels for local video advertising.
Online Video Advertising Trends
The trend towards more online video advertising is happening for these reasons:
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Broadband Internet is a staple now. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, more than two-thirds of US computer users subscribe to broadband today. Of course, the popularity of YouTube and the awareness of its separate impact on online media has pushed the envelope further, making online video watching a mainstream Internet activity.
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The cost of video production has fallen. Video ad production costs have come within reach of small businesses with the availability of low cost, customizable template-based, video ad production services. These video ad services - such as TurnHere, Spotrunner and Pick-n-Click - are offering their services at reasonable price points between $300 and $500 for a 30-second spot. These tools are also providing small, local ad agencies with tools that can automate customized video ad production and the media buying process.
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The availability of low cost and locally targeted ad distribution channels has grown. Such channels as Internet Yellow Pages (Yellowpages.com, Yellow Book and SuperPages.com), City Search and other local web directories are beginning to integrate video ads with search business listings. Eventually, the targeting capabilities will narrow down to the household level.
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Who Are The Players?
With a predicted market size of $5 billion, or 35 percent of the current local online ad budgets in 2012 ($317 million for 2007), local online video advertising is one bone that all local advertising channels will begin to fight over, according to Borrell Associates, a research company that focuses on local advertising trends, in a recent report, "The New Frontier: Local Online Video Advertising."
In the local directory advertising market right now, opportunities for online video advertising include the Internet Yellow pages, City Search, and potentially other local search engines and web directories. Of course, local merchants certainly have a multitude of other opportunities to post their own promotional videos online for free to sites like YouTube, Metacafe or MySpace, but that doesn't mean they're doing it. Most small businesses need education and hand-holding about the process of online video advertising. SuperPages, Yellow Book, City Search and others are in an ideal position to fill that role.
City Search is already spotlighting video ads embedded within business profiles of specific, competitive and high margin business categories, such as automotive and real-estate. City Search will integrate local video ads from TurnHere into its directory listings.
Superpages has settled on a pricing plan for customized video ad production, under $1,000 for a 30-second clip with separate fees for placement and distribution.
Online Video Advertising Benefits
Video advertising within local business directories combines the price points that small businesses can afford, with the targeting capabilities of online advertising. It also carries the strength of pull marketing and possesses the emotional and dramatic power of television. In fact, so far, small business owners seem to relate better to a television-like video ad, than to performance-based marketing, such as pay-per-click ads.
Challenges and Opportunities
There are still many challenges that need be solved before local online video advertising can be considered a mainstream type of online advertising. Much more investment will be required by the directory providers targeting the local video ad distribution space. They will need to include search centric site design to facilitate video search optimization, video delivery, sales integration with other advertising formats, before we see widespread adoption of online video advertising online.
In addition, it is not clear at this time how these video ads can be virally spread to a wider web audience beyond their targeted web directories listings. It seems that this again may become an afterthought for Internet Yellow Pages companies. (They took the same route when they built their first Internet Yellow page directories which where not "crawl-able" and "index-able" by search engines.)
Until next time….
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Monday, November 12, 2007
BizActions Conference 2007
Hilton Old Town
Alexandria, VA
Louise Rijk presents:
Email, Social Media and Search in the Overall Marketing Mix
More Details...
Recent Presentations
128 Business Expo 2007
"Blogging and Podcasting For Business"
Click here to play the video.
495/Metrowest Business Expo
Pre-Expo Keynote
"The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Advertising Medium"
Click here to play the video.
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| AMPTalk, our monthly audio podcast show on Internet Marketing is jam-packed with interviews and commentary on a wide-range of topics ranging from paid search advertising, ecommerce web site building, social media marketing and online media buying. |
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Copyright© 1996-2007. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
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