

Tell HN: We need uber for TV and billboard advertising - bendtherules

Advertising model for physical space as well as TV and radio seem to be stuck in the old days, no commoner can just spin up a advertising quickly for a few days.<p>It incurs huge cost, because it is geared towards mass campaigns. Anyone should be able to put up micro-ads (with small airtime or small geographic footprints) with targeted audience (like at a specific hour of the day or, on a conveniently located billboard) without paperwork and long-term deals.<p>Is it possible? If you are dealing in this sectors, what do you feel about this?
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jeffmould
Actually for TV and radio there are several companies doing remnant ad sales
which are fairly affordable and can be spun up pretty quickly. The hard part
of TV ads on the fly is you need to have some production quality which can add
expense and time. Not so much for radio. With billboards, I do know there are
remnant sales there, but again you have a lead time to produce the banner that
is attached to the billboard.

One company that comes to mind off the top of my head in the radio/TV space is
Bid4Spots.com. Basically like Google AdWords for TV. There was talk at one
time of Google offering a similar product, but I don't know what ever happened
to it. Finally, there was another company that had an entire ad wizard for TV
ads. Essentially you could pick choose music, or do a voice over, add some
text, and have a generic video playing in the background. You could
essentially create an entire ad and have it on TV in a day. I can't remember
the name of the company though.

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bendtherules
Also, Bid4Spots.com seems to be radio-only. Did it support TV ads too earlier?

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jeffmould
I thought it supported TV buying as well, but could be wrong.

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PaulHoule
In any broadcast medium the broadcaster is expected to conform to community
standards so somebody will have to watch the ads and do some editorial
selection.

As for production values, look at the ads run by local car dealers, furniture
stores and such. Images with text and voi eovers play well. If all else fails
use the "Ken burns effect"

A person with a month or so of training and maybe $5k of gear could produce a
few ads for a customer in a day and you have to hook up that person to the
customer.

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bendtherules
Yes, I understand that it probably wont be possible to run instantly. But
manual approval should be possible within 24 hours, allowing for next-day ADs.

As for local Ads, in my country India those are run only in "local cable
channels" which is basically some extra channels inserted by local cable
providers (in US, I think(?) there are only nationwide cable providers). There
is little scope for such deals in mainstream channels.

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tired_man
We have local channels put together by the cable company (and the phone
company in some places), too. They mainly have video of community events, like
town council meetings or school sporting events. There are a few that have
tickers and scrolling panels with various topics and combinations of topics
(general news, financial news, community news, weather, sports scores, stock
ticker, etc.).

