Yellow Pages Association Blog

In my Search Engine Land column last month, I talked about the importance of adapting advertising strategies to not only fit new macro-trends in how customers are searching for local businesses, but also to reflect the speed and nature in which specific communities are changing their search patterns.

While directories and advertisers are increasingly leveraging online channels in their marketing plans, a new survey by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding U.S. broadband adoption shows that a significant number of American consumers still haven’t signed on to the digital grid.

Some interesting stats from the survey include:

• Two-thirds of American adults use high-speed Internet connections at home, but approximately 35% of Americans—about 93 million consumers—are not connected where they live.
• 22% of U.S. adults are not Internet users at all. This group includes older Americans (median age of 60) and a high share of Hispanics (20%).
• Specific population segments trail the combined average in broadband adoption at home (65%), including low-income consumers (40%), consumers with disabilities (42%), rural consumers (50%), African-Americans (59%), and Hispanics (49%).
• 70% of non-broadband adopters have cell phones.
• African-Americans and Hispanics are more active mobile Internet users than whites – 39% to 27%.

These data remind us that although so much of our attention these days is focused on online growth and the need to align our advertisers with their target demographics in that space, we cannot forget that a sizable number of consumers do not use the Internet to conduct local search. Additionally, we also need to develop strategies that leverage the fact that certain groups are more prone to use mobile Internet search when looking for local business information.

That said, the way we define “demographics” and “groups” and their related media behavior may be changing. A new study from the University of Southern California, the Hallmark Channel, and E-Poll released this week argues that media behavior is best evaluated by looking at “life stages” as opposed to demographics. The report, which looked at media behaviors at eight major life-stage groups—including teens, college students, recent graduates, singles with no kids, new nesters, established families, married couples with no children and empty nesters—found distinct media usage differences at each life stage.

From our perspective, the results of these studies confirm what our industry has been saying for years. While social-economic and ethnic demographics are clearly factors in determining media usage, the needs and wants of consumers change as they grow up, buy their first homes, start families, send their children off to college, etc. At each stage, Yellow Pages—irrespective of the form in which it is delivered—provides an important service.