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Spot Runner Raises $51 Million in Funding

Internet-based ad agency Spot Runner has secured a combined $51 million in funding from Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, Legg Mason Capital Management and Groupe Arnault/LVMH. Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf said of the funding, “These strategic investments serve as a strong validation of Spot Runner’s technology-driven advertising model, as well as the results we have generated for advertisers and media owners. This further accelerates our momentum as we expand into a broader spectrum of online and offline media, both domestically and abroad.”

DMGT is a large media company based in the U.K. with operations in Central Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. The company has interests in a variety of media channels including national newspapers and related digital operations, local media, business and financial information, exhibitions and radio.

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world. Operating four broadcast channels in Mexico, Televisa maintains interests in pay-television network production, international distribution of television programming, direct-to-home satellite services, cable television, magazine publishing and distribution, and radio broadcasting.

Luxury products group Groupe Arnault/LVMH boasts a portfolio of over 60 prestigious brands including Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Donna Karan, Sephora and TAG Heuer.

Louis Vuitton communications head Antoine Arnault said of Spot Runner’s funding, “The global media landscape is undergoing a sea change. For advertisers to be effective, they will need to completely shift their thinking about how media is targeted and distributed, and how creative can be versioned for multiple audiences. Spot Runner is the clear leader in this area. As one of the largest advertisers in the fashion category, we’re very enthusiastic about the prospect of working with them to capitalize on these transformations.”

Earlier this year, Spot Runner acquired local online advertising provider, Weblistic.

Search Gains on Social Media in Share of Online Video Referrals

Hitwise is reporting data showing that search and social media are virtually equal when it comes to the share of referrals to online video.

In the week ending April 12, 2008, the share of search referrals were up 35% year-over-year, while the share of social media referrals was down by 20%.

Within search referrals, Google’s share increased by 44% and Yahoo’s increased by 13%. Within social media referrals, the share of MySpace.com referrals declined by 25%.

The increase in search referrals is likely attributed to universal and blended search.

Still, online videos are gaining in popularity. comScore is reporting that over 10.8 billion online videos were viewed in the month of February alone, up 3% from January and 66% from February 2007. And Hitwise adds context with reporting that viewers spent an average of 16 minutes and 12 seconds watching online videos last week, up from 15 minutes and 14 minutes year-over-year.

Related Reading:
YouTube Videos Now Part of Google Maps Search Mix
The Video Search Revolution will be Contextualized
Michael Boland
Universal Pictures: Optimizing Video for Search
Spot Runner Buys Weblistic: Local Search on Video Steroids

Urban Mapping Unveils Geotargeting and Local Search Platform

7% of searches are local, including a zip code, city or neighborhood term. With over 10.8 billion searches conducted by Americans in the month of March alone, 7% is a lot of searches.

Now Urban Mapping is making it easier for search marketers to improve the effectiveness of their online advertising and paid search campaigns for local search. Today, the neighborhood data provider announced the launch of its Geomods platform, designed to “deliver more geographically-relevant results for users.”

Here’s what you can expect from the new platform:

• Platform utilizes standard web protocols and serves geographic terms relevant to a specified area.
• Provides a custom service area based on a variety of demographic, spatial and business factors (via a separate module)
• Leverages the installed user base of its neighborhoods boundary database, providing many of the same geographic keywords that power search portals, Internet yellow pages and mapping platforms.

“This geotargeting platform is a radical departure from traditional IP-based geotargeting,” said Ian White, Urban Mapping CEO. “It has been proven again and again that traditional geotargeting does not provide a high degree of confidence for local search, where granularity is of paramount importance—blocks, not ZIP codes or metropolitan areas matter.”

Urban Mapping’s GeoMods services includes US, Canadian and European coverage. The company currently counts SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, MapQuest, Microsoft’s Live Search, Ask.com as customers.

Related Reading:
The Benefits of Geotargeting
Marchex Shows How to Cash In on Local Search
Mobile Local Search: A Perfect Storm
Social Media Meets Local Search

Cable Firms Collaborate to Compete with Google

Executives from the six major cable companies have been gathering at monthly meetings in an attempt to offer national advertisers innovative methods of reaching their customers, according to The New York Times.

“Project Canoe” has been meeting for six months, alternating between New York and Philadelphia in an attempt to make good on a long-standing promise by cable advertising: to get the right advertising to the right person.

They plan to do this by investing $150 million into a national advertising platform that allows them to streamline their local advertising efforts. Cable execs hope to see revenue increase from $5 billion to $15 billion annually as a result.

With Google delivering such results through highly targeted online advertising, advertisers have remained cautious about cable’s ability to provide the kind of advertising they want. On-demand and DVR technology also hinders cable’s ability to perform in the ad game.

But interactive features could give cable the step up it so desperately needs. The new advertising platform could allow viewers to request specific information about a product.

Still, the cable firms are behind similar efforts by Google, which has a deal with EchoStar, and the recently announced acquisition of Weblistic by Spot Runner.

The cable companies weren’t even considering creating a separate company for the new platform until they were pressured by media buyers from GM and Proctor & Gamble. Now, they are grappling with whether or not to find a CEO from within the cable or advertising industries. However, with the successes of Google and Spot Runner riding on user-driven behavior, perhaps cable should be looking elsewhere to head up their new initiative.

Spot Runner Buys Weblistic: Local Search on Video Steroids

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Today Spot Runner announced its acquisition of Weblistic, a provider of local online advertising, in an all-stock transition. Spot Runner is an internet-based television ad agency headquartered in Los Angeles. The company says in its press release, “The acquisition of Weblistic will enable Spot Runner to correlate TV and online advertising with phone- and Web-based responses to provide tracking, analysis and results.”

The result promises to be an integrated offering of online, TV, and radio advertising for small businesses in their local markets. Spot Runner’s press release cites proprietary iProspect-Jupiter Research study proving the value of TV in search engine marketing:

“TV advertising is the number one impetus for people to search for a particular company or product online, surpassing all other forms of advertising, even word of mouth (iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study conducted by Jupiter Research, June 2007)”

The acquisition is part of a greater trend that The Kelsey Group’s Michael Boland labeled the “Webification of Small Businesses.” This is where B2B companies lure small businesses in with traditional funnel marketing techniques, starting with a free service in the hopes that SMBs will upgrade to premium services in the future.

If you’re a small business, you’re unlikely to have the in-house resources to handle a broad marketing strategy. Since Spot Runner handles everything from production to placement, adding the coordination of Weblistics online advertising services looks like a win-win for both companies as well as their customers.

Spotrunner was initially dubbed by the media as “Google Adwords for TV.” Now that Google TV Ads has broadened its reach, competition will heat up. As Spot Runner chases Google, Google TV Ads may find itself wondering who let the dogs out.

Google doesn’t produce TV commercials,but it boasts a network of video production companies to help new TV advertisers. Videos submitted through the system are vetted for quality.

The deal consolidates the local search space further: deep-pocketed Weblistic competitor ReachLocal hired a huge salesforce to sell PPC (paid search) and SEO (search engine optimization) to small and medium-sized enterprises. Merchant Circle relies more on telemarketing to scale SMB customer acquisition. Weblistic found itself squeezed in the middle with a smaller sales force and telemarketing efforts.

The combined Spot Runner and Weblistic teams now face a univeral search challenge as SMBs start optimizing SERPs for blended search and, eventually, video highly-targeted video ads.