Comcast Spotlight, Mixpo enter video ad agreement

Small to medium sized businesses may get a boost from a new agreement between Comcast Spotlight, the ad sales division of Comcast Cable, and Mixpo, an online advertising company. The agreement makes it simple to take an existing on-air video ad into the online video ad space.

by Kristina Knight

Local businesses advertising with Comcast Cable will be able to place standard display ads with Comcast.net and Vehix.com as well as create online video ads for their products; the agreement accounts for nearly 90 of Comcast's local outlets.

The Mixpo platform allows marketers to create video ads which will play on Comcast properties; ads can be created from existing video, picture or audio files. There are also some stock media options to help marketers create new and innovative video ads. Once created, ads can be tested in A/B split-tests to determine which ad performs better. From there, advertisers can track ads for impressions and views, play-through and conversion rates and also geographic location of the viewer or referring sites. This information can then be used to tweak ads for peak performance.

"We are very excited to be working with Comcast Spotlight to bring the power of online video advertising to local advertisers and [help them to] leverage their extensive online reach," said Anupam Gupta, Mixpo President and CEO.

The key to online video is to remember online video ads are different from traditional television commercials. Viewers won't sit through a standard :30 commercial. Online video ads need to be focused, sharp and interesting. In many cases a :10 pre-roll can be as effective, if not more, that a :30 ad seen on television.