RHD Expands Relationship With Yahoo!
R.H. Donnelley announced today that it will partner with Yahoo! to give its advertisers a more substantial presence on Yahoo! Local. This will come in three flavors.
From the release:
- Featured Listings — Sponsored listings with guaranteed placement on the first or second search results pages for broader exposure in a specific geography or category
- Enhanced Listings — Sponsored listings that offer the ability to add a detailed business description, photos, tagline and coupons to create greater online visibility for businesses and enhance their appearance within organic results
- Yahoo! Maps Business Listings — Sponsored listings within the context of a map-based view
This is part of RHD’s “triple play” effort — putting its own spin on the term that has also been used for the video, voice and data service bundles of MSOs and telcos. For RHD, this includes print (Dex), online (DexKnows) and distribution through online partners. The latter includes this deal and other online distribution it gets from LocalLaunch!, which it acquired a year ago.
More importantly, the new addition gives the sales channel another tool in its toolbelt — one that advertisers are increasingly asking for — for a better cross-platform product. As examined in TKG’s Local Search and IYP forecast released in March, IYPs will see a greater CAGR than the aggregate local search market, because of their physical sales channel, and the ability to execute more effectively on cross platform sales strategies.
This also joins other deals that have been formed in the past, such as that between Superpages and Google; and you can expect directories and IYPs to increasingly develop online distribution and better ad bundling efforts. Today’s deal applies to the 14-state region (Western and Midwestern states) in which Dex distributes its print directories.
