We've just completed a preliminary agenda for our upcoming Directional Media Strategies ’09 conference, Sept. 22-24 in Orlando, Florida. DMS is our annual event focused on the global directories industry and, more broadly, connecting small-business advertisers with customers. It is…
The folks at Canpages have been very busy lately. In addition to producing competitive print and online directories throughout Canada (where they go head to head with the formidable Yellow Pages Group), the Canadian independent directory publisher operates Immersifind, an…
Idearc announced it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, a move that it signaled in its year-end 2008 earnings announcement, when it indicated some form of bankruptcy filing was likely if not inevitable. Here is how Idearc describes the process…
On a recent visit to Stockholm, we sat down with Eniro President and CEO Jesper Karrbrink, who is managing Eniro through a strategic shift described in a presentation late last year as moving "from print dependence to online opportunity." In a videotaped interview,…
The independent Atlanta-based Yellow Pages publisher Metro Directories will go out of business this year, and its rival Yellowbook has agreed to honor the contracts of Metro advertisers for books yet to be published this year. Here is a statement…
Longtime U.S. independent publisher White Directory (owned by Hearst Corp.) has launched a complete rebranding, dropping the old "Talking Phone Book" in favor of "LocalEdge." The company says it plans to phase in the new brand over the next 12…
The Yellow Pages Association released some details of its 2008 U.S. usage study, which showed a substantial drop in print references, mostly but not completely offset by online Yellow Pages usage growth. Print references, measured for YPA by KN/SRI, dropped about 8 percent…
Saw this article today -- more evidence that residential White Pages are verging on extinction. AT&T has gotten the nod from Ohio's utility regulators to eliminate White Pages from co-bound White/Yellow phone books. First, stand-alone residential White Pages books will go (many…
One day after R.H. Donnelley released its 2008 results showing a sharp drop in ad sales, Idearc followed suit today with annual results that also reflect a very tough Yellow Pages environment in the United States. The big news in…
As debt maturities loom in a tight credit market, the directory publisher R.H. Donnelley announced today that it has retained the financial firm Lazard to "assist in the evaluation of its capital structure, including various balance sheet restructuring alternatives." On a conference…
Local Insight Media announced today that its subsidiary The Berry Co. (formerly an AT&T property) will expand its reseller agreement with AT&T's Yellowpages.com. Under the new terms, the number of markets in which Berry reps will carry YPC in the…
Netherlands-based Spotzer has launched its online video product in Sweden with partner Lokaldelen i Sverige AB, which is a local print and online directory player that competes with the market leader Eniro. Lokaldelen is a unit of European Directories, which is…
My colleague Neal Polachek and I just got off the phone with the leadership team at the Australian publisher Sensis, who walked us through its half-year results ended Dec. 31. We continue to marvel at how successful Sensis has been at…
R.H. Donnelley has flipped the on switch on the new DexKnows.com Internet Yellow Pages platform. We wrote extensively about this new platform while it was in beta, in a blog post as well as an Advisory from The Kelsey Report.…
Last week, Yell Group issued its nine-month earnings report (the company's financial year ends March 31) and most of the news was sobering. Organic growth is expected to be in the negative double digits in its fourth quarter, and…
Last week the Albany, New York, Common Council passed a law that restricts the delivery of telephone directories to homes and businesses. Among the provisions of the ordinance is a requirement that any phone book delivered to a home must land within 10…
Gary Campbell is among the directory publishing executives with the most experience in building a performance-based ad model in the print product. He is now hoping to leverage that experience in a new venture called Cost Per Call Solutions. The…
In a significant move, AT&T Interactive and Idearc Media announced today that they will extend each other's reach by allowing business profiles on one site to be distributed on the other. Here is a quote from the press release: "Cross…
The movement to compel Yellow Pages publishers to make it easy for consumers to opt out of receiving telephone books and punish unwelcome distribution gained some momentum last week with legislation introduced in Minnesota and the city of Albany, New…
We got news this week of two directory publishing operations shutting their doors, a reflection of the challenges of running a competitive directory publishing company in the face of a difficult economy and intense competition from incumbent publishers and the…
