Yellow Pages

It was a full day here in Las Vegas €" the land of free drinks that can cost you every penny you have, and where the hotels invest very little in clocks and windows. The YPA annual meeting was packed…

Three technology firms serving different segments of the online directory and local search space have merged in the interest of broadening their collective base of customers and extending the range of services offered. Aptas, recognized for its work in extracting…

Britain€™s Office of Fair Trading issued a statement on April 5 that it would request that the nation€™s Competition Commission begin an investigation into the UK classified directories market. The OFT made the recommendation based on its conclusion that the…

The Swedish publisher Eniro AB has pledged to reduce the decline of its Swedish print business at a faster pace than earlier promised. The publisher saw its print directory revenues in its flagship Swedish market decline by almost 11 percent…

A survey from eMarketer reveals some interesting data on the Swedish online advertising market. Swedish advertisers are moving full force into online advertising in Europe's most wired country. But there is fairly widespread dissatisfaction with online advertising among Swedish Internet…

TransWestern Publishing issued a brief press release today announcing that it has engaged Goldman Sachs to "explore strategic alternatives." Generally, this language translates into, "We are for sale."One question of course is, who is the likely buyer? Yellow Book always…

An article yesterday on bloomberg.com reported that European antitrust regulators have given the nod to the acquisition of Yellow Brick Road by an international private equity consortium. YBR is a holding comany that includes Fonecta (Finland), Mediatel (Austria and Czech…

The Australian directory publisher Sensis continues its expansion into markets traditionally dominated by newspapers by entering the online recruitment advertising business. Sensis makes its move through the creation of a separate business called LinkMe, which will operate as a joint…

The Kelsey Group met last week with Publicar, Colombia's leading directory publisher, and was given a look at the results of recent user focus groups conducted in that country. The results were fascinating to us, because they were so similar…

This just might be a record for the shortest holding period for a private equity investing in the directories business. This morning, Yellow Pages Group announced it will buy the SuperPages Canada business, which Bain Capital had acquired from Verizon…

The nature of local search and its potential for usurpring the strong position Yellow Pages holds here in Europe dominated the morning session at the EADP's spring meeting in Rome. Jean-Marie Guille, who runs online directories for France's PagesJaunes, laid…

Here is a snippet of what we have to say about the Yell acquisition of TransWestern Publishing in an Advisory that will be issued tomorrow to clients of The Kelsey Report: "...a private equity buyer might have found it difficult…

Canadian publisher Advertising Directory Solutions (ADS) announced it has discontinued its Go Pages directories. The mobile directories for Calgary, Edmonton and the €œLower Mainland€ of British Columbia have all been discontinued effective immediately. The publisher€™s Vancouver Island Go Pages book…

The Kelsey Group and ConStat recently completed the second wave of our User View research project, in which we ask consumers about a range of issues around the use of local media, including both traditional and digital. One of the…

A March 27 article in the Times of London online edition says Yell Group is planning to pursue an acquisition of TransWestern Publishing, which recently disclosed it had retained Goldman Sachs to €œexplore its strategic options.€This report comes as no…

A story this week on Adweek.com talks about a new ad campaign from SBC that tries to restore the mystique of printed Yellow Pages while setting SBC Yellow Pages apart from competitors €" referred to only as the €œDifferent Book€…

Greetings from the Mirage Hotel. I am sitting here staring at Steve Wynn€™s enormous signature on his new Vegas strip hotel, poring over my notes from the first general sessions at the Yellow Pages Association annual convention, halfway into its…

Eniro is a very progressive directory organization operating in several very progressive markets (including Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) as well as some developing markets like Poland and Russia. It is probably fair to say that the company made too…

I recently noticed a press release on the merger of two relatively obscure publishers of Spanish-language Yellow Pages directories. The acquiring party is Hispanic Yellow Pages of America, backed by the private equity fund called Hispania Capital Partners LLC. The…

I recently noticed a press release on the merger of two relatively obscure publishers of Spanish-language Yellow Pages directories. The acquiring party is Hispanic Yellow Pages of America, backed by the private equity fund called Hispania Capital Partners LLC. The…