A year after web-based TV creative ad agency Spot Runner started its push into the ad buying side of the business, the company is finally launching the Malibu Media Platform. The sales platform addition is meant to complement Spot Runner’s customizable cable TV commercials, which are mostly aimed at small marketers. Malibu’s business model is pretty simple: Spot Runner collects a fee with every transaction. Along with revenues, if Spot Runner can deliver a more simple, non-intrusive platform, the company could experience a spike in its credibility, which has suffered to a degree this past year.
But the Los Angeles company has been getting more attention for the ongoing $13 million lawsuit brought against it by former backer WPP Group. Last month, WPP filed an amended complaint after a judge dismissed the suit. With Malibu ready for the light of day, Spot Runner hopes to show that it has not been distracted by the legal conflict and that its relationships with other agencies and sellers are secure.
Otherwise, the timing isn’t as bad as it could have been. The cable ad industry it primarily caters to is more healthy than other media categories, and the general ad market is looking less worse than it did last year. Also, the mainstreaming of ad exchanges has gotten traditional media buyers more open to the notion of online, automated ad sales.
As for automation, Spot Runner believes Malibu can challenge Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV Ads, which remains fairly limited in terms of the inventory sold on its system. In a conversation with paidContent, Spot Runner media platform GM Gus Warren said, “We don’t have the kind of sales conflicts that Google does. Spot Runner doesn’t own a site like YouTube, so it don’t have an incentive to push advertisers towards inventory that we own. We’re not a publisher. Google likes to say it’s a tech company, but it gets 99 percent of its revenues from ad sales, so it

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