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SMB Hunger for ‘TV’ Ads

One of my news alerts is set for “yellow pages.” Under that heading an old story (April, 2006) showed up yesterday. It was a link to this blog citing a March 28, 2006 Spot Runner press release (.pdf) based on a SMB survey the firm had conducted. Here are some of the findings:

  • Where SMBs Advertise Today: More than 60 percent of small and medium businesses advertise locally in the Yellow Pages and on their company websites, while 40 percent use direct mail.
  • Yellow Pages Advertising: While the average small and medium business spends nearly one quarter of their advertising budget on Yellow Pages, it is one of the first advertising vehicles they decrease to try new mediums.
  • TV Ad Budgets: If they were to purchase TV advertising, almost 30 percent would allocate new advertising dollars while the rest would pull from existing advertising mediums in the following order: daily newspapers, Yellow Pages and weekly newspapers.
  • Internet Advertising: While many small businesses believe online advertising is “effective,” 69 percent recognize there are customers they simply “cannot effectively reach through the Internet.”

This is in a way timely with the launch of Citysearch video ads and the general rise of video online. As I mentioned previously, Citysearch told me they sold their intended quota of video spots at a very accelerated rate – indicating the hunger for video ads among SMBs.

As video and dynamic slide shows that emulate video become more and more prevalent we should see more SMBs taking advantage. Availability of online video may also go some distance to addressing the perception in the fourth bullet above: that SMBs can’t “effectively reach” their customers through the Internet. This probably goes to the “opacity” and complexity of paid search and the general fragmentation of the Internet.

Video also meets one of the fundamental SMB needs to “see” their ads online.

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Related: Simon & Shuster’s new Bookvideos.TV is through a partnership with TurnHere, which is behind the Citysearch video.

This entry was posted on May 8, 2007 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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