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Advertising - Monday, October 30, 2006

The Prince of Murdoch-dom Joins $40M Investment Party In TV Ad Template Co. Spot Runner

Watching commercials in NYC, SF or Zurich, we often see local ads with horrendous production quality hawking a local futon showroom, tire fixer or liquor store. We can understand buying ad placement via a local cable company, but how can they justify the cost of producing a commercial, as lousy as they look?

So we bought into the concept behind Spot Runner since we first posted on it, and now we see that some other smart media guys are ponying up. LA-based Spot Runner's $40M Series C round comes via WPP, CBS, Interpublic Group, Allen & Co. Tudor Investment as well as News Corp. scion Lachlan Murdoch. Back for more were Index Ventures and Battery Ventures.That is some pretty strong strategic funding.

To review, Spot Runner provides fairly high quality TV advertising templates that could be used by thousands of business types. The local business owner then just inserts their logo and messaging to localize the ad. They then use Spot Runner to buy local advertising. In the process, production costs then go from tens of thousands of dollars down to a few hundred bucks. Of all the broadcasting companies that we have seen in recent years, Spot Runner is the first that has a shot at becoming the Google of TV ads.