BIA/Kelsey’s forecast for local online advertising revenues is that it will soar from slightly over $1 billion in 2012 to $5 billion by 2017. Describing that new media ecosystem was the purpose of the Online Video session at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference in San Francisco, CA.

This tour of the online video ecosystem ranged from an content aggregator (Juan Delgado, Sporting News Media) to a content originator (Steven Ludwig, Williamson Source) to a advertising tech platform (Vamshi Sriperumbudur, YuMe). By providing the wide swath of players in the local online video demonstrates the dynamic nature of this advertising vehicle.

Content aggregators like Sporting News Media (part of a larger company that aggregates sports video segments from all sports) have been very successful in driving traffic to their sites even surpassing viewing of larger bigger brand name sites of similar types of programming. This allows them to sell to advertisers and their agencies opportunities that drive the best results, an increasing requirement of such advertisers and agencies.

Local content originator firms like Williamson Source are demonstrating the proof of concept of being able to monetize successfully. In a suburban area of Nashville, TN, this company is developing a considerable amount of original video content and using that content to sell online video advertising. One thing they have already found is the success in selling online video advertising on their live events and locally originated programming – local advertisers want to be associated with that type of programming.

Finally at ad tech firms like YuMe are successfully navigating all of the challenges that online video confronts advertisers. These challenges are:

1. Undertaking proper audience segmentation and targeting
2. Working the media and online channels to execute local campaigns
3. Managing the complexities of multiple creative executions

YuMe provides the solutions to these challenges by providing that targeting ability while offering reach and scale.

While online video is expected to grow substantially over the next few years, it will not occur without a number of pitfalls and mistakes. Many firms will be that are part of this growing advertising media