Yellow Pages Group the Latest to Marry Video and IYP
Canada’s Yellow Pages Group announced today that it will launch enhanced business profiles on Yellowpages.ca this spring, offering video ads and photo galleries. This joins U.S. IYPs Yellowpages.com, Yellowbook, Superpages and a growing set of local search sites that will offer video ads to small businesses.
According to the press release, the offer includes:
1) A dynamic 30- to 60-second video profile of the business
2) A photo gallery where advertisers can showcase up to 10 photos
3) Business details, including location and contact information, hours of operation, products and brands, methods of payment, map and directions, etc.
Little is mentioned about price, but it will be interesting to see what YPG comes up with. All the IYPs mentioned above have launched various services and price points, and are experimenting to find offerings with the most salability to new and existing advertisers.
Having various price points will probably be the best strategy for IYPs given that they call on such a range of businesses (i.e., restaurant, dentist, car dealership) with differing needs and ad budgets. This will involve a sliding scale of price vs. personalization and manual attention, which will take form through relationships with various vendors.
There are and should be, in other words, lots of discussions taking place as we speak between video vendors and IYPs. Many are in the middle of a feeling-out process for brand-new territory, which could take a while. It will also take a while for sales rep training and execution, and for most IYPs to get it right. But you have to start somewhere, and the experimentation and product launches from the likes of YPG signal a genuine effort and perception of value.
At the higher end of the sliding quality/price scale mentioned above is TurnHere, which recently announced a vendor relationship with Superpages. I had the chance to talk to CEO Brad Inman and company yesterday about some of the directions in which TurnHere is moving. There are some exciting things happening, which I’ll save for an upcoming firsthand demo at the company’s East Bay (San Francisco) headquarters. Stay tuned.
