A closer look at SpotMixer
SpotMixer is a video advertising service for small to medium sized businesses. This service is offered by One True Media, a well funded Silicon Valley startup backed by Kleiner Perkins ($19M total in funding since 2006). Even though SpotMixer isn’t exactly playing in the video commerce space, there a couple of ideas worth meditating.
At a simple level, SpotMixer is a nice little service which allows small business to create and run video ads in just a few minutes.
Creating a first video ad with SpotMixer is rather easy. First users select a template, a business vertical and type in some text they want featured on the video, similar to Google Adwords.
The tool is 100% online and requires no software install. Yet, users can upload their own photos, and record a voice-over sound clip to be attached to the final video. SpotMixer also provides a wide range of themes including music which make the video rather fun to build.
The final step of the process consists in selecting where the video ad should be inserted, and assigning a budget. There are a few interesting options like Facebook or Google, which SpotMixer recently signed as a distribution partner. There is also an option to just get the ad and the embed code, to be inserted in HTML pages, for $49/mo.
When considering these separately, the pieces that make up the SpotMixer solution aren’t impressive. After all, putting together a video animation from different templates with some basic customization isn’t exactly rocket science. But SpotMixer goes the extra mile and offers a comprehensive solution for the lower end of the market, which does not want to deal with the complications of HTML code embeds, video hosting or even video production to get a video message out to prospects.
The integration with Google Adwords is also quite interesting. Google has been offering geo-targeting capabilities for some time now. When combined to the SpotMixer ad creation capabilities, it should be possible for a local business to create a nice promotional video and promote it locally to a targeted base of clients. Video is powerful for connecting people, and humanizing businesses. The potential for video is enormous for local shopping, where over approximately 75% of all shopping dollars are spent.
Back to eCommerce and retail in general, SpotMixer is an invitation for smaller merchants to think about video as a way to seduce prospective clients. Every day that goes by a new service or technology is introduce that lowers the video commerce bar for everybody.
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March 18th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
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March 19th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Xavier,
Thanks so much for featuring http://www.spotmixer.com. You hit the nail on the head when you reported that SpotMixer “offers a comprehensive solution for the lower end of the market, which does not want to deal with the complications…”
We hear over and over again from our SMB customers that our solutions have allowed them to quickly and easily step into the online video advertising space.
In addition to leveraging the Google Adwords network, many of our customers are posting their SpotMixer videos on YouTube and now Hulu, as well as posting them on their own sites.
Thanks again for highlighting our services,
Cherie@SpotMixer