• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 10, 2008

Are smallish local advertisers ready to branch out beyond text ads and search marketing?

Betting they are, Web video startup Jivox is launching a do-it-yourself platform for businesses of lesser means to create, target and deliver video ads online.

"Jivox was founded on the premise that businesses are ready to move beyond banner ads and search advertising by adding online video ads," said Jivox founder and CEO Diaz Nesamoney. "But, they need help tapping into this new medium."

For that, the Jivox platform providers advertisers with video ad creation tools, targeting technology, reporting capabilities, and a network of publishers.

To bring its new platform to market, Jivox has raised a $2.7 million seed round of financing led by Opus Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Nesamoney, who is also contributing his own capital to finance Jivox, has high hopes for the new platform.

"Just as Google enabled small businesses to promote themselves online with the introduction of Google AdWords, we believe Jivox can empower small businesses," he said.

Google itself just entered the nascent video advertising market with its AdSense for Video platform, which gives advertisers the choice of running video or text ads on a small portion of a video viewer.

"To date, video advertising has only been accessible to the large brand advertisers due to the high costs of production and placement on TV," Nesamoney said. "The explosive growth in online video content is creating an opportunity for mid-sized and local businesses."