AgendiZe today announced it will launch an API for Yellow Pages publishers to enhance the videos they are shooting for small businesses, and hosting on their sites.

The “video to action” API lets publishers create overlays for videos that bring up interactive calls to action when moused over. This is similar to functionality provided by Mixpo, and also comes weeks after AgendiZe did something similar for the video assets of VideoAgency. That was more of a custom job, whereas this extends the capability (via API) to Yellow Pages publishers to apply to their growing volumes of video clips.

The benefit here is that it makes video more actionable. Video in a local search context combines the traditional branding elements of television advertising with the direct response capabilities of the Internet. Tools like this draw out the latter and make it easier for users to call a business, or perform any number of “save and share” functions (send to phone, share on Facebook, etc.).

This also jibes well with another argument we’ve been making: All the video being sold by Internet Yellow Pages needs to be distributed beyond their walls in order to get the most ROI for advertisers. Video fits nicely inside a business profile on an IYP, as calls to action are already on the page. But as these videos grow legs and start to show up on YouTube and in search engine results (universal search), tools like this could eventually allow the calls to action to migrate with them.

They also importantly bring tracking capability along with them, which will be important for IYPs to be able to report ROI back to advertisers — whether or not the videos live under their own roof. As pointed out by Superpages’ Robyn Rose last week, this will accelerate IYPs’ willingness to open the floodgates and start pushing these videos out to Google and other well-traveled local search outlets.

More background on AgendiZe and its core call-to-action functionality can be found in this video presentation from the always entertaining AgendiZe CEO, Alexandre Rambaud.