• by Erik Sass , May 7, 2007

A new company, Ripple, is poised to help businesses large and small create their own digital place-based video displays to promote inventory and drive traffic. The expansion of the new service, announced today, promises to democratize place-based video advertising, a medium long dominated by large video networks in cooperation with national retail chains.

In effect, local stores will be able to advertise in other local stores using neighborhood networks. The network may also prove useful to national advertisers looking for local access.

Ripple has already established video displays at 400 locations throughout Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. The network's co-founder and president, Ali Diab, says it reaches an estimated 10 million consumers a month and hopes to expand the network to thousands of locations nationally by the end of 2007.

The core of the service is an online component, Ripple Ad Center, which allows retailers to design their own programming and target it to as many locations as necessary using targeted metrics. Ad messages are inserted into a content stream drawn from major content providers, like CBS News, Yahoo and local news, which runs local sports scores, weather and traffic. Ripple's flat-screen video displays are installed in retail establishments, such as coffee shops, bookstores, shopping malls and fast-food outlets.

"We are building a nationwide network of locations in communities across the country that offers unprecedented hyper-local advertising opportunities to businesses of every size," says Diab. "The neighborhood sporting goods store down the street now has the capability to build a TV-quality ad, place it in the coffee shop a few doors down and have the power to change or adjust that campaign on the fly using the Ripple Ad Center."