• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 31, 2004

In a move that will bring TV commercial-like advertising to the online business publishers, Unicast Tuesday announced deals with four top business news publishers to utilize its so-called Video Commercials as part of their online ad offerings.

The publishers, which represent both business-to-consumer, as well as B-to-B markets, include BusinessWeek Online, Fox News, Investopedia and Reuters.com.

The move is the latest in a series of developments designed to make Internet advertising more like TV via an array of streaming media applications. While many of those approaches depend on a broadband video infrastructure, Unicast says its video commercials can deliver streaming video ads to narrow-band users, and via a format that delivers true broadcast-quality video of 28 to 30 frames per second.

The move by business news players is interesting, because B-to-B marketers historically have not been able to utilize TV advertising to a significant extent because of the relative targeting inefficiencies of TV programming, which generally reaches much more of a consumer base. But by offering video advertising in a much more targeted B-to-B information environment, the move could spur a whole new category of B-to-B commercials, which ultimately could help spawn a TV advertising marketplace as new niche digital tier cable and satellite networks move into that space.

All of the new Unicast Video Commercial developers, BusinessWeek Online, FOX News, Investopedia, and Reuters.com, said they plan to include the format in their advertising rate cards.