Cable Meets Yellow Pages in YB-Charter Deal

Yellow Book has paired up with cable company Charter Communications in a distribution and marketing deal. The announcement is a little vague on details, but as far as we can tell, Yellow Book and Charter will distribute co-branded directories with Charter to the cable provider’s voice customers in its footprint, which closely matches Yellow Book directory distribution areas.

The two companies will reportedly stop short of closing sales of each other’s products, but will jointly market charter’s phone service and Yellow Book’s directory advertising options.

Here is the announcement, and an article on the deal from this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The bottom line is that Yellow Book and Charter have a lot in common. They share many common markets, and hence a common competitor in AT&T. There is an easy logic to the notion that Yellow Book exposes charter to more potential voice customers and Charter gives Yellow Book entrée to potential new advertisers.

Where these deals succeed or fail, of course, is in the execution. Will the two sides promote one another’s services with enough vigor to make a difference? Time will tell, but it is clear the two have interests that are well aligned.