Video creation platform provider Mixpo today announced partnerships with five local media organizations: NBC Local Media, Tribune, Freedom Communications, TownNews.com and Fisher Communications.

The deal will equip each new partner with Mixpo’s VideoAd platform, which will let advertisers create and distribute video ads into the publishers’ existing online advertising systems. For the publishers it provides an enticement for new and existing advertisers, given the lowered barriers of video creation that has driven awareness and demand among SMBs. Ultimately, the idea is to better monetize publisher display inventory with video ad units.

For Mixpo, it’s an additional sales channel through which to push its platform into the SMB marketplace. It’s also additional distribution. There are lots of video production vendors targeting the local/SMB space and. They’ve each differentiated themselves by feature sets, and more importantly distribution (YouTube alone isn’t enough).

For the former, Mixpo has lots of great analytics and customizable calls to action that can be embedded directly within videos. But with respect to distribution, it continues to form deals like this that provide locally targeted online inventory where these videos can “live.” Importantly, these deals also come with a sales channel to push the product into the fragmented SMB market.

In addition to this deal, it’s signed channel partnerships with SiliconValleyOnline, KGO Radio and real estate social network ActiveRain, to name a few. This also follows a clear pattern of channel deals from the handful of leading video production vendors in this space (most recently, SpotMixer’s deal with Google). This is the name of the game, and will be the biggest survival factor for these companies.

Mixpo is positioned fairly well so far in this respect. The company was founded in 2005, and has raised $6.5 million in venture financing from the Madrona Venture Group, the Working Opportunity Fund, Yaletown Venture Partners, SpringBank TechVentures and private investors.