Spotrunner, a mashup between an ad agency and a retailer of TV advertising time, apparently offers the ability to run 30-second commercials on television stations around the country on channels likes ABC, FOX, Discovery, MTV and many more (full list here). I'm dying to try them out:

The experiment that would be most interesting to me would be to drive search traffic. If you could come up with a unique name and play the Pontiac angle (ask viewers to "Google" you), then run ads, I'd be fascinated to learn of the acquisition cost behind such a model.

I think Spotrunner is only the first step towards greater participation from small businesses and "long tail" targeters into the media market. I'd anticipate more opportunities like this in the future, whether it's advertising on TV, radio, in theatres or even product packaging (just imagine an SEOmoz blog post on the back of your Corn Flakes).

Anyone ever used TV advertising to draw search? How about Spotrunner?

BTW - Try searching Google for them... another undeservedly sandboxed site - as I said before, we need to turn down that filter (I do note that their link profile looks similar to a text link buyers, but that's just because they're getting links from the local stations where they serve ads).