Local business video spending to skyrocket

A study by The Kelsey Group predicts that small and medium-sized businesses in local markets will increase their video spending from $10.9 million in 2007 to $1.5 billion in 2012. But these aren’t pre-rolls folks, but advertorial video sold by the increasingly aggressive online yellow pages, city guides and local business directories. See an example here of a New York pizza place on YellowPages.com. The problem with many local media sites — the ones without vibrant city guides or business directories that score high in search — is they have no place to put advertorial videos that will actually get watched by people thinking about buying a particular product or service. Since these sites are outside the purchase loop — if you Google “Dallas doctors” for example, you get no local media results in the first 2.5 pages — they won’t be significant players in the small to mid-sized advertorial video pool.