Who cares about Chastain Chem-Dry carpet cleaning service in Atlanta? Actually, a lot of people, I would think — from employees and customers to companies Chastain buys from and those that are sold to. In other words, this is an…
At the recent EADP congress in Rome, Peter Darpo, CEO of European Directories, provided the audience with detailed information about the recently created European Directories. The company covers seven markets and has annual revenues of around 620 million euros and…
The Yellow Pages Group held a CMR summit in Toronto last week. According to the ADM Flash, "During the last three years, Yellow Pages Group has been the fastest growing publisher in the world, has the highest EBITDA, highest IYP…
As the owner of a small business, I have always been interested in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Therefore, I was pleased to read that Perry Evans, CEO of Local Matters, was honored by E&Y with…
This afternoon Fast Search & Transfer and AutoTrader.com held a Webinar on how AutoTrader.com "is driving new product development, speeding time to market and improving customer satisfaction, by shifting from its proprietary search solution to one powered by FAST Enterprise…
In Search Engine Guide this week, Gord Hotchkiss said that "the C Level Ceiling" is the primary problem that search engines are facing in growing search expenditures. "Senior execs don't get search, they don't want to get search and they…
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, AT&T Yellow Pages CEO Dennis Payne predicted that revenues from its directory business will start to rise this year. He predicts that the growth will most likely come from delivering advertising on electronic platforms.…
The European Association of Directory Publishers held its 11th annual spring conference in Rome, June 1-2. The Kelsey Group cosponsored the first of these events, which was held in Monaco, and we have attended every spring EADP congress since then.…
This morning's New York Times (subscription required) has two major stories about the newspaper industry on the front page of the business section. Columnist David Carr reported a conversation he had with an editor of a major newspaper about a…
It is an old saw in the Yellow Pages business that the industry's three greatest strengths are its sales force, data collection and ability to publish a virtually error-free directory. Like most businesses, Yellow Pages looks simple from the outside…
What is the best way to bridge the so-called digital divide? • Provide a sub-$100 notebook computer for educational use in developing nations?• Introduce an ultra low-cost computer that is a combination phone and personal organizer that can be fitted…
Bob Garfield, editor at large for Advertising Age, tried hard (perhaps too hard) to entertain the audience at the recent Yellow Pages Association annual convention. It was one of those multimedia presentations where he used a combination of PowerPoint, video…
So the news alert comes in over the PR Newswire: "Yellow Pages Face Extinction Due to PaperlessPetition.org." Using Earth Day 2006 as its excuse, PaperlessPetition.org essentially suggests that publishers eliminate print Yellow Pages in favor of Internet directories. The author…
The message from the ADP Annual Convention last week and my colleagues Carlotta Mast and Charles Laughlin's Advisory this week is that independent publishers continue to be growing quite nicely, thank you. The mood at ADP in Tampa was very…
The ADP Annual Convention and Partners Trade Show kicked off officially this morning with presentations by outgoing ADP Chair Jim Hail of Hagadone Directories and President Larry Angove. The tone was much less adversarial toward incumbent publishers than it has…
At the beginning of the year, Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst for Internet and media marketing and managing director of Piper Jaffray, made the bold prediction that Google would hit $600 a share in 2006. At the time we wrote,…
Each year I attend a few conferences put on by other companies, both because they tend to have different speakers, but also because it enables me to pick up some ideas that can enhance our events. Today I went to…
I didn't listen in on the analyst call that McClatchy CEO Gary B. Pruitt held yesterday, but there must have been some chuckles when, according to The N.Y. Times, "Mr. Pruitt, tried to persuade his listeners that newspapers remained vital…
If you just read the headline from each of the companies reporting on the new national syndication research results, you could be excused if you thought that a lot of companies are the most used Yellow Pages directories. Some companies…
One of the more controversial issues in the Yellow Pages business is the subject of companion directories. At last year's Directory Driven Commerce event, Joe Walsh spoke adamantly against the increasing number of mini directories and their impact on the…
