"Think it's tough getting local advertisers to embrace Internet advertising? Try TV advertising. The complexities and cost of producing a video and buying air time are too daunting for most small business owners. Spot Runner, a start-up that comes out of its closed beta today, is aiming to change that. It's developed a unique self-serve, web-based ad-buying system for TV. Think AdWords, but for TV ads.

The service works like this: The local business owner goes to the Spot Runner site, picks a business category and then chooses from among thousands of generic, pre-taped video ads. Each ad comes with pre-written voice-over text that can be customized (see screen shots below). Once the business has picked an ad, it tells Spot Runner how much it wants to spend on air time and which media markets it wants the ad to run in. Spot Runner comes back with a media plan. It then completes the production work of the customized ad, buys the air time and gets the video into the hands of all the pertinent networks. Later, it sends the advertiser a report of where all the ads ran and when.

The company is based in LA, although Waxman is based up here in the East Bay. His co-founder is Nick Grouf. The two of them built and sold two other companies, People PC (it went to earthlink in 2002) and Firefly Network (sold to Microsoft in 1998). SpotRunner has taken a $10 million round of funding from Battery Ventures, Index Ventures and an unnamed third investor."