It’s probably surprising to a lot of people who decried the end of the television commercial was near that the 30 second video form is proving to be hard to kill. And not only is it resilient in its natural environment of television but is becoming more and more of a part of the web. Advertising continues to be a way for people to enjoy free media. And for clients and media planners it is the good old 30-second spot but with a new found ability to target consumers in ways television can only dream of. For now anyway.

With services like SpotXchange (Full disclosure: I invested in SpotXchange a couple years ago) and others, consumers can be targeted in real time based on what sites they are visiting, what videos they are watching, or games they are playing, who they are (age, sex, household income, education, # of children, etc.) and what they are currently shopping for online (travel, retail, auto, etc.).  This obviously reduces waste and should enhance performance. And I hear even more cutting edge targeting stuff is soon to come.

It seems to be working. My friends at SpotXchange sent me some pretty astounding recent numbers for their service. SpotXchange is the 3rd largest Video Ad Network and the 17th largest Video Property in comScore’s most recent Video Metrix.  The network served over 100M video ads in October, which is equivalent to streaming over 750,000 hours of video to consumers. Which put them ahead of properties like Disney, ESPN, and ABC Television. It should be noted that SpotXchange has yet to raise institutional funds, whereas all of the other properties ranked in the top 50 of both Media Metrix and Video Metrix have been funded by VCs and/or are multi-billion dollar/multi-national corporations.

Perhaps the coolest thing is they are hiring in 2010. They’re looking for NY Account Executives and Business Development managers. If you or somebody you know might be a good fit please have them email jobs@spotxchange.com and reference this post.

Happy New Year.