Yellow Pages

Here at the YPA convention, a panel discussion featuring independent Yellow Pages publishers unveiled one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry. There is a very early effort afoot to combine the three major North American industry trade associations into…

The Magic is Back, and don't let anyone tell you different.Here at the Yellow Pages Association's annual confab, there is a general air of optimism about the industry. It's sort of the same feeling people get when they anticipate a…

This writer shares a personal experience that convinced him at least that Craigslist was a more efficient way than Yellow Pages to locate a tradesperson to install his ceiling fan. It's worth reading and absorbing. The premise is that posting…

Saw this today in an AP report on Yahoo!'s 1Q earnings: In a report released earlier this month, Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Rich Fine estimated spending on Internet ads this year will increase 27 percent to $14.5 billion, surpassing…

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…

Reports came out over the weekend that Yell Group is the sole remaining bidder for Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion, the publicly listed Spanish publisher that is 60 percent owned by Spanish telecom Telefonica. According to news reports, several private equity…

Search Engine Journal points to an AP article that reports Verizon is testing pay-per-phone-call ad auctions in a Boston-area print book. A generic ad is given and "dynamically assigned," meaning it connects users to whatever local business won the auction…

Australian publisher Sensis has launched GoStay, a print + online travel service that TKG wrote about in a recent article in Local Media Journal. Here is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the new service. This is another…

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…

I don't normally read every scoping announcement Yellow Pages publishers issue via e-Linc, but a recent one caught my eye. Yellow Book announced that it is combining a Burbank book and a Glendale book and offering the market a wide-area…

Last week, in Hempstead, New York, city bureaucrats voted to approve Verizon's application to build a competitive television distribution system. The final ruling was probably not ever in doubt given the intense lobbying effort being put forth by Verizon and…

Last week 250,000 editions of The Baltimore Examiner were tossed to homes in and around the Baltimore area. That's right — The Baltimore Examiner not The Baltimore Sun. Interestingly, The Baltimore Sun — the 169-year-old incumbent newspaper — offers its…

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…

Yell and two private equity consortia are reported to be the final round bidders on Spain's Telefnica Publicidad e Informacin. This excerpt is from the Financial Times. UK telephone directory group Yell and two consortia comprising four private equity firms…

Lots of pick-ups on an AP article that talks about something Verizon's Eric Chandler discussed at last week's Drilling Down conference, namely the addition of a pay-per-phone-call feature in the print Yellow Pages. We will write about this notion in…

Amdocs announced today that it has acquired the Danish firm Stibo. This appears to be a way for Amdocs to get deeper into the European market. Here is the announcement.

Just got my hands on a copy of the "Style at Home Special Issue — Home Improvement" produced by Canada's Yellow Pages Group and media partner Transcontinental Media. The product was recently distributed in Toronto. The joint venture between the…

Found this press release interesting. One independent publisher is suing another in federal court for allegedly copying ads for a competing publication. This is not such a big deal as a business dispute, but it does offer a small glimpse…

Found a couple of new items on the results from the Yellow Pages Market Reporter, the syndicated usage measurement product from KN/SRI. One is a press release from BellSouth touting its results from Birmingham, Alabama. And another is a news…

Yellow Book continues its stready pace of acquiring independent directory publishers — large, small and in between. The company just announced the acquisition of Banana Publishing in Springfield, Mass. This is not the Springfield of "Simpsons" fame (at least we…