No Change in U.S. Yellow Pages Forecast

Universal McCann has been the definitive word in advertising forecasts for more years than most of us have been alive, and team leader Bob Coen has been consistently conservative yet accurate. In December, he predicted that Yellow Pages would come in at about $14.6 billion for 2007. In his recent update, his prediction for Yellow Pages is essentially unchanged. This is notable because his overall forecast anticipates less growth than originally expected (+3.1% expected in June 2007 vs. +4.8% in December 2006). Only the Internet advertising component is showing strong growth (+17%) with the largest medium – Direct Mail – growing at +5% to account for 21.2% of total ad spend predicted for 2007.