France Telecom is finally pulling the plug on the 26-year-old Minitel service, which it launched in France in 1982. (Actually, Minitel is really 15 years older than that according to SEC filings: "Under an advertising sales agreement entered into in 1967,…
As many of us have read over the past week, some major hotel chains -- Hyatt and Hyatt Place Hotels, Omni and some Starwood properties -- have made the decision to remove Yellow Pages directories from their hotel rooms. (Although a…
The Wall Street Journal today wrote about the challenges that newspapers have in trying to sell to small local businesses. Beth Lawton at the Newspaper Association of America kindly asked us to add some context to the article (subscription required). Here…
R.H. Donnelley posted its first-half results today. While ad sales are clearly trending negative, the company was able to report modest revenue and EBITDA growth. Ad sales, however, are the best indicator of how the business is performing. The following…
Frank Jules believes there is a clear shift from print to online taking place. And the best way for publishers to make a successful transition is to move from selling individual products to selling a bundle of products based on…
New CEO Scott Klein presented Idearc Media's first-half results and previewed his plans for reorganizing and reenergizing the company. The main theme of the presentation was a “Journey of Transformation,” which is truly what Idearc needs based on the results of…
One of the hard and fast truths about print Yellow Pages advertising is that the ads at the front of the heading almost always generate more calls and leads compared with those further back. The current trend is for small-business advertisers…
Yell Group saw an 11.3 percent rise in its share value yesterday (to 79 p) following its first-quarter 2009 earnings (its financial year ends March 31) announcement, in which the publisher topped its U.S. guidance, fell a bit short in the…
The headlines from this week’s edition: GE: The Heat on Immelt Google: Weathering the Storm? The Future of Fannie and Freddie Anheuser-Busch’s Troubled Brew This wedding tradition of something old and something new is appropriate for BusinessWeek’s leading online stories…
AT&T Advertising & Publishing saw a 3.3 percent first-half revenue decline, to US$2.82 billion. Part of the decline reflects the sale of the L.M. Berry operation to Local Insight Media, and the resulting lost revenues. That deal closed early in…
Having been through the post 9/11 advertising downturn with a Yellow Pages sales agency, I can attest that 2001 and 2002 saw a dramatic increase in bad debt and slow-paying customers. Some publishers in the U.S. went from 2 percent…
Idearc Media has made the decision to discontinue 28 competitive directory titles in Florida, Tennessee and Texas, and has eliminated 200 positions as a result. The company will also close nine sales offices, each associated with the independent directory titles…
R.H. Donnelley announced today that President and COO Peter McDonald, a 35-year industry veteran, will retire in September. The company also announced that George Bednarz, its current senior vice president for enterprise operations, will take on the new role of executive vice…
Today The Kelsey Group unveiled a new name and brand for our September conference. What used to be known as Directory Driven Commerce is now Directional Media Strategies. In most respects, nothing has changed. The conference is still Sept. 15-17…
Scott Wambolt has left his job as Yellow Pages Group's senior vice president of sales, citing a desire to "pursue other career opportunities." According to the press release announcing Wambolt's departure, YPG will move to a flatter sales organization with the three…
This morning Idearc Media announced Scott Klein as its new CEO, replacing interim CEO Frank Gatto, who returns to his former role as executive vice president of operations. Klein comes from a technology and consumer-product background, and is currently an operating…
There has not been all that much fresh coverage of the rumor, reported earlier this week, that Microsoft may acquire Yell Group, the U.K.-based international publisher with operations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain and Latin America. We have…
Reuters is reporting a rumor that Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer has set his sights on Yell Group as his next acquisition target, which has led to a bump in Yell's share price. We don't know if this is true. It is,…
Yellowbook has launched a new microsite to encourage consumers to download and share spots from its new ad campaign. The site also links to Yellowbook's YouTube channel. TKG recently posted on the new Yellowbook campaign and brand makeover. We see…
Yell Group announced results today that showed all its operating groups generated top-line growth in its 2007-08 financial year (ended March 31), with almost all the growth coming from the Internet. The company emphasized that it hit its EBITDA guidance for…
