What do they do, exactly? Well, the system offers regular old folks like you and me - folks without big budgets for mult-million dollar ad buys - to run advertisements on network and cable television for about the cost of a television. It's an interesting way to get a message out there, and down the line, I can see this service getting really interesting for a number of innovative uses.
Want to ad a new element to your Alternate Reality Game? Put together a quick video, upload it, set it to display on a certain channel at a certain time, and all those that were clever enough to pick up the clues about when it was set to air will get the next set of clues in the game. Perhaps you're the next AskANinja, and you're wanting to get your creative output in the eyeballs of someone with budget - run your ad in the Hollywood-LA market during the Daily Show. Perhaps you've got the next Facebook or Google in your notebook - run a quick elevator pitch in the San Francisco market on Fox and CNN during the business shows.
Unfortunately, none of those ideas are presently doable with the system. They have yet to set up the system to accept user generated content to be run as ads. They say that the investment capital they've taken on will go to create the system that allows for that material to be uploaded (how much does a PHP upload script cost on HotScripts.com?). More likely that the money is going to be used to do more large scale ad buys in additional markets. If you currently want your ad to show anywhere other than Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Portland or Indianapolis, you're plain old out of luck.
But let's assume for a moment that you want to run an advertisement in one of those markets of a political nature, you want to take advantage of being able to stick your name at the end of it, and you don't want to put your pants on to make the transaction. So long as you're a supporter of Barrack Obama, you should be in hog heaven.
That's right, just about every ad you have to choose from is calling John McCain old, labelling Hillary Clinton a communist, or comparing Barrack Obama to Jesus. I realize that for a large minority of the readers, you're fine with these comparisons - but the vast majority of us are fairly turned off by that.