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I learned of the British Airways crash-landing at Heathrow yesterday from Richard Sambrook's blog, which is in my RSS reader. He happened to be waiting in an airport lounge, shot a phonecam picture, and posted it by mobile phone. Naturally I checked the Guardian, which was a bit slow out of the gate, the BBC, which was quite on top of things, and the Times, which was somewhere in the middle.

What I missed was this lovely juxtaposition of content and advertising spotted by Juan Giner. It might have been targeted based on content analysis, but I suspect it was just a run-of-site BA ad. British Airways is pushing their $189 London deal hard across multiple media channels right now.

Tossed casually into a meandering media story in Sunday morning's New York Times is a reference to Spot Runner, a significant new Web-based ad service -- it's in beta -- that lets small businesses schedule local video advertising on cable/broadcast systems.

It's the local TV equivalent of Google's Adsense, a way for small businesses to buy advertising without having to talk with a sales rep, worry about production details, or for that matter put on a pair of pants. Like AdSense, it's inexpensive and it's something an entrepreneur can do at 11 p.m. or 6 a.m.

From a fairly extensive library, you pick a stock commercial like this one designed for carpet cleaning, you fill out some forms, and you pay with a credit card. Spot Runner recuts the voiceover and handles placement.

In my market, the Betty Boop ad would cost me about $350 for exclusivity. Presumably the airtime would cost more -- I can't tell and I'm not pulling out a credit card just to try it. But it does look remarkably easy and relatively cheap.

Both local TV stations and newspapers are hurting economically these days because traditional big retail advertisers are being replaced by national chains, such as Walmart and Best Buy, that buy mostly national advertising. Some of that money trickles down to local media, but it's a pittance compared with the good old days of local department stores.

To compensate, they have to find ways to go after smaller advertisers. Most newspapers and TV stations never call on the majority of potential accounts in their areas. Many entrepreneurs are bad credit risks. Many can't afford the rates. Cost of sales eats up any potential profit. A self-service, Web-based system fixes all of that.

For the life of me I can't figure out what AdSense would look like on a radio station, but Cnet is reporting that Google has bought DMarc in a deal that starts out at $102 million but could cost as much as $1.13 billion, depending on performance. DMarc's lines of business include station automation and station business processes, and a 500-station ad network.