AT&T Yellow Pages Unit Changes Name, Expands Portfolio

The Kelsey Group has learned that effective Nov. 1, AT&T Advertising & Publishing will become AT&T Advertising Solutions. But there is more to this than a cosmetic name change. AT&T has also reorganized the company and expanded its portfolio to make AT&T AS the primary channel for ad sales throughout the AT&T enterprise.

Under the new structure, AT&T AS will have its existing print Yellow Pages portfolio, as well as all ad sales responsibility for Yellowpages.com. Previously, YPC was directly in charge of out of territory, or “white space” sales, while the erstwhile A&P ran all in territory online sales. Yellowpages.com will now be known as AT&T Interactive, and will have expanded product responsibility but no sales role. David Krantz, currently head of Yellowpages.com, will remain head of the new AT&T Interactive.

Essentially, the “three screens” sales approach is being consolidated under the Advertising Solutions umbrella, adding mobile search, IP advertising (ad sales on the att.net portal) as well as the AT&T ad-supported DA platform and the U-verse IPTV platform. The advertising products for these platforms will reside under AT&T Interactive.

The consumer facing brands, including Real Yellow Pages and Yellowpages.com, will not change as a result of this new structure.

An AT&T spokesman said the simple way of thinking about it is that AT&T Interactive is the “factory” that produces products for AT&T Advertising Solutions (the “channel”) to sell.

The existing reporting structure, in which Krantz and Jules report to Ray Wilkins, remains unchanged. Greg McCastle, who was SVP of IP Advertising in AT&T’s Converged Services unit, joins AT&T Advertising Solutions as SVP of national direct sales. His job will be to take the newly expanded bundle of services that AT&T AS can offer and sell it directly to national advertisers, as well as pitch it to general ad agencies.

Overall, this new organization is designed to make areas of responsibility more clear-cut. More critically, it consolidates a strong multi-platform bundle of services into a single channel. It certainly represents a significant increase in Jules’ and the directory organization’s role within AT&T.