• Kelsey Group Blogs , Friday, February 22, 2008 1:15 PM

Marketers can be skeptical about the scalability and viability of video classifieds as business model for a number of reasons. "Video classifieds can't be efficiently searched on a local or category basis; video production has been time consuming; video uploading has not been intuitive," says Peter Krasilovsky, a program director and analyst at The Kelsey Group. "And the value of most personal goods--the fodder for free ads--haven't been high enough to make the effort. Real estate and cars, yes. Easy chairs that cost $10, probably not."

Still, companies like Real People Real Stuff have continued to move forward with their video classified monetization efforts, even securing revenue-sharing deals with newspapers like The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The Real People Real Stuff team has also launched a job-focused version of their site, dubbed Video Job Shop.

Krasilovsky notes that there are other companies trying to carve out a niche in the video classifieds space, including Ad2Ad, which serves the community and college newspaper industry, and the Consignment Store, a Webcam-based effort to help sell big ticket items by The North Ogden Standard Examiner, in Utah.

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