I feel somewhat vindicated this morning. There have been a few people who scoffed at my suggestions that newspapers can use video to disrupt local TV on the web. Mostly, my comments have been in context of news content, but I’ve also realized there is a lot of money to be made from video advertising. I’ve seen first hand how popular and profitable video advertising can be for a local newspaper site.

Borrell and Associates now confirms: Newspapers are winning. They are generating more revenue from video than local TV stations.

What’s doing it for newspapers is not pre-roll on content, but infomercial presentations that people actually choose to watch (yes, people will actively choose to watch advertising if it suits their interests).

Here’s an example of such a kind of advertising: classified job ads turned into video.

I would look for local newspapers to get more innovative over the next couple of years about the kind of video advertising it produces for local businesses. As site managers see where the money is, they’re going to keep pushing in that direction.

There is both money and audience in video. And you don’t need to start at the high end, you don’t need to try to be like TV, to get there.