Borrell: TV stations still losing video ad race

Last time Borrell Associates put out a report measuring local online ad spending, newspapers beat local TV in local video revenue. The latest numbers, due out in a couple weeks, still have newspapers driving more total local online video revenue than TV stations. But the bigger surprise is that internet yellow pages — which are increasingly selling advertorial video to small and medium business — are poised to surpass local TV in local video revenue, too. As I’ve written before (even back in 2007), this should be a worrisome trend for TV stations. Remember, newspapers dropped the ball in monetizing small and medium business advertising, yielding that tremendous opportunity to Google. Now you could argue TV stations are doing the same, but with video. What gets even more worrisome is Google’s increasing role in porting online video advertising (even self-serve video ads) to television. And then there are the cable companies’ efforts to target video ads down to zip codes and neighborhoods. While this may appear to be small potatoes now, someone will make a connection (like Google a few years ago) and a huge disruptive business model will take form.