Cool Company of the day: Spot Runner
Ever wanted to do a TV ad campaign for your business?
Not a problem.
Even the thought of it sounds too pricey?
Not a problem.
Don’t know how in the world you’d shoot and create the commercial itself?
Not a problem.
Enter Spot Runner, a new service that packages up your specific advertising message with pre-produced footage. There are dozens of stock commercials they have in their inventory that you can recraft as your own.
The L.A.-based online startup, currently in beta, also allows for quick selection of which TV market you want to advertise in, what kind of frequency and dayparts you seek and what such a campaign would cost.
Spot Runner is particularly cool given that,
1) This is all online and about as automated as it could possibly be
2) It replaces entrepreneurs’ confusion about this traditional form of advertising with knowledge, power and options to get going.
Do you think they’re cool like we do? Would you use their service?
October 1st, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Spotrunner is not the first agency to provide these services online. These internet TV agencies have been around for years. In fact, Spotrunner’s largest competitor Cheap-TV-Spots.com preceeds Spotrunner to the online discount TV ad market by 5 years. CheapTVSpots.com produces and airs high quality custom-made TV and Web ads nationally for less than Spotrunner can do locally. Spotrunner’s premade-type ads from scrap ads have obvious creative and communicative limitations that custom ads do not have. Also, if you read the fine print you will find that if you stop buying Spotrunner’s more expensive air time, that they will lease the same ad to your direct competitor in your home market. This is very confusing to the customer in your local market and will negate the value of your entire ad campaign. Also web businesses (which are essentially national businesses) can’t really use Spotrunner because you can’t buy national air time for a Spotrunner ad. That’s because Spotrunner has some rights issues with their ads. By comparison, CheapTVSpots.com produces ads that can air on national TV or on the web without restriction. Maybe Cheap TV Spots should just buy Spotrunner, or team up with a VC and Yahoo and set up an AdWords / Spot Runner killer. It would not be too hard to do.