Canada's Yellow Pages Group has launched its second hybrid vertical product — a mixture of magazine editorial content and Yellow Pages headings — this one for the family-care vertical. Here is a link to YPG's press release announcing the new…
This just in. Verizon has OK'd the spin-off of its Yellow Pages unit, Verizon Information Services, as a separate public company. We knew this was coming, but now it is official. If you thought Verizon was an unusual name, try…
LinkedIn, the service that greases the wheels of virtual networking, is extending that concept to the Yellow Pages, by offering a directory of local service listings, with a layer of social networking. Here is a write-up on Red Herring. LinkedIn…
I was at the Association of Directory Publishers meeting in Virginia last week. There was the usual bread-and-butter how-to content (distribution efficiency, for example) plus a little of the usual red meat incumbent bashing for the independent publisher faithful, though…
It was widely reported today that A9, the search engine operated by Amazon, has pruned its branches by getting rid of several features and products, largely focused on location.This is from a Reuters article earlier today: The A9 Toolbar, maps,…
In this week's Local Media Journal, we write about Australian publisher Sensis' recent decision to drop the "Pages" from its "Yellow Pages" brand, thus reshaping the brand into one that is truly platform agnostic. Along with this re-branding comes the…
OK, that headline is a little bit ahead of the facts, but the question is a legitimate one for the Yellow Pages industry. As we report in this week's Local Media Journal, Canada's Yellow Pages Group has moved its publishing…
I am writing from Los Angeles as we prepare for our DDC2006 conference, which begins tomorrow. I plan to kick things off tomorrow with a discussion of key themes we see driving the industry today. These are among the topics…
Don't have many details yet, but I did learn on Friday that Canadian Phone Directories, a PE-backed independent directory publisher in Canada, plans to launch a Toronto directory in competition with Yellow Pages Group, Canada's dominant directory publisher.CPD was formed…
R.H. Donnelley issued this statement today regarding the issue that has emerged over CEO Dave Swanson's educational background.
We just got off the phone with Sean Greene at R.H. Donnelley who walked us through the rationale of his company's acquisition of LocalLaunch, which was announced earlier today. We will explore the deal in next week's Local Media Journal,…
As the lead organizer of The Kelsey Group's DDC 2006 event, I'm pretty proud of our lineup of keynote speakers and grateful for the help I've gotten from my colleagues in bringing them on board. In order to give the…
This one surprised me a little. The U.K. competition commission has decided that Yell, which has been operating under a pretty strict price cap (actually a regime that required annual rate reductions), will from April 2008 forward be able to…
Yellow Book issued a press release yesterday citing new results from the Yellow Pages Market Reporter that showed it has a usage leadership position in Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Northern Virginia. The release also noted that Yellow Book has moved…
Yellow Pages Group announced today it is buying MTS Media, the directory unit of MTS Allstream, for C$281 million. This is a healthy price for a business that generated C$42 million in revenues, but YPG is a motivated buyer, given…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group just released its 2Q and first-half numbers. On a comparable basis, its 2Q directory revenue growth rate was 4.7 percent and EBITDA was up 8 percent. The company's guidance for the full year is top-line growth…
We've been following news reports today regarding the decision of Germany patents and brands office (the German acronym is DPMA) to delete the term "Gelbe Seiten," the German phrase for "Yellow Pages," from its register of brand names that are…
Yell's acquisition of the Spanish publisher TPI was made official earlier this week. Here is the statement from Yell:Yell Group plc ("Yell") today announced the closing of its acquisition of the Spanish directories business Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion S.A. ("TPI")…
According to this article in the Guardian newspaper, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has offered an unspecified amount of financial help to U.K.-based Yellowikis, which faces a costly legal fight with Yell.Yell, the leading directory publisher in the U.K., is going…
Both R.H. Donnelley and Verizon posted their second-quarter and year-to-date figures today, and each revealed some challenges. We will write up both sets of results in detail for next week's Local Media Journal. In the meantime, here are some quick…
