Comcast Scoops Up Vehix

Comcast announced today that its advertising sales division, Comcast Spotlight, will acquire automotive site Vehix (sans “dot com”). The company had a previous relationship — financially and strategically — and today’s deal makes the marriage official.

For Vehix, this ties the company closer to Comcast’s local sales channel. These feet on the street are a unique and valuable asset, as Charles Laughlin pointed out last week. So this positions Vehix well, at least from an ad sales perspective.

For Comcast, this also signals a greater valuation of cross-platform sales capability and in equipping its sales reps with online advertising. In this respect, there is an interesting parallel to what the Yellow Pages industry is going through, and the way it views its sales channel.

Meanwhile, Vehix brings some other interesting possibilities to the table for Comcast. The company is moving in some interesting directions in terms of reaching users across different devices and bringing interactivity and automotive search to the television experience.

These strategies will eventually intersect with greater IPTV penetration and we’ll see some interesting mashups. This all looks good on paper. The proof for Vehix’s product development and Comcast’s sales improvements will of course have to be shown in the execution.

More analysis to follow — plus more detail about the business relationship — after I get the chance to talk with Vehix CEO Derek Mattsson.