The StartUp Beat: 3/15/07
-More on Viacom/You Tube – Paul LaMonica of CNNMoney.com writes today about Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit being a potential boom to smaller online video companies. See yesterday’s The StartUp Beat for comments from Scott Flacks of Los Angeles-based Stickam, one of those companies that could benefit. Here’s LaMonica’s article: You Tube rivals: Thanks, Viacom!
-Donna Bogatin at ZDNet blogged this week about the potential for a Google entry into television advertising, and featured L.A.-based SpotRunner—a company that enables local businesses to advertise on local TV at an affordable cost. SpotRunner has a good team with a lot of expertise and seems to have a head start in the market. In addition, despite a lot of testing, Google has yet to prove that they can be an effective online advertising “agency” beyond their search engine and its affiliates. Here’s the write-up: SpotRunner vs. Google: Let the TV advertising battle begin!
-Wired this week featured a Q&A with Michael Eisner about his new venture into web content production. His company, Beverly Hills-based Tornante, announced this week that it has produced and will begin showing episodes of a new series on various web video sites. Here’s the interview: Meet Michael Eisner’s Prom Date
Comments
In her article on Google TV advertising, Donna Bogatin at ZDNet may lead one to assume that there are only two players in this market. Not so. The world’s first international internet-based TV ad agency Cheap-TV-Spots.com already has the lock on quality custom-made TV ads (no stale copy-cat templates) and low cost national, local or international air time. Within 24 hours Cheap-TV-Spots.com can conceive of, write and produce a custom TV or web video ad, and target advertising on broadcast, cable or satellite TV, with no long term contracts for air time required. They are the best at discount TV advertising for entrepreneurs on a budget with an amazing number of international TV ad awards to date. No discount agency can compare to their value, speed and absolute reliability. They’ve already expanded into the Asia -Pacific market. It’s hard to compete with that level of talent, even if you have a billion bucks behind you. Google will probably squash them eventually (just like Sam’s World squashed small business), but it’s going to be a heck of a fight.
Posted by: Algie Green | May 6, 2007 09:37 PM