Posts Tagged ‘Local Search’

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BIA/Kelsey’s DMS ’10 Conference Just Weeks Away: Sept. 14-16 in Dallas

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

This year, Yellow Pages Association is proud to once again partner with BIA/Kelsey to present Directional Media Strategies (DMS), one of the most important industry conferences of the year, scheduled for Sept. 14-16, 2010, at the InterContinental Hotel in Dallas.

For those of you who haven’t yet signed up for DMS ‘10, be sure to check out the latest version of the agenda and list of speakers to get a better sense of the exciting lineup we have in store for this year’s conference:

Several highlights include:

  • Bruce Cortterill, CEO of Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand, will provide an inside look at how one incumbent operator has successfully focused on increasing value in the short-term while preparing the organization for long-term success.
  • Paul Dawalibi, President and CEO, Praized Media; Michael Francesconi, Director, Content and Community, CityGrid Media; and Andrew Shotland, Proprietor, LocalSEOGuide.com, will discuss how Yellow Pages publishers can realistically make the shift from traditional to social media.
  • The future of Digital Yellow Pages will be debated by top minds in the industry, including Eitan Ackerman, Executive Director of Marketing and Sales Engineering, Amdocs; Gianluca Carerra, VP New Media, Truvo; Sivan Metzger, GM, Kenshoo Local; Neil Salvage, Executive VP Advertising, CityGrid Media; and Gregg Stewart, President, 15Miles.

We’re really looking forward to DMS ‘10 and the great exchange of ideas and building of business relationships that will take place. To register, visit the conference registration page today to benefit from reduced pricing. See you in Dallas!

August 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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As the Heat Spikes, So Does Yellow Pages Usage

Thursday, July 15, 2010

It’s another brutally hot July, with record-breaking temperatures sweeping the country. And once again, consumers are turning to Yellow Pages for air-conditioning solutions so they can get some relief from the heat.

When it comes to a major buy like an air conditioning system, consumers rely on Yellow Pages to provide the trusted local business information they need to get started on their purchase. In fact, over the course of the year, more than 32 million references will be made to air conditioning contractors and systems in Yellow Pages directories—with the highest number of references occurring in July— according to the Local Media Tracking Study commissioned by YPA and conducted by Burke.

A review of the data also show that:

  • An air conditioning heading user spends $1,497 on average, significantly higher than the all-headings average of $440.
  • The average user seeking to purchase an A/C system looks at approximately 5.4 ads, higher than the all-heading average of  4.9 ads.
  • Because air conditioning equipment is an infrequent purchase, most consumers are in a search mode when shopping.  Fifty-six percent of Yellow Pages users either have no name or multiple names in mind when looking at the heading, providing an opportunity for advertisers to influence consumers’ decisions about where to purchase. Moreover, 70% of shoppers end up doing business with an establishment that they have never used before.

  • Data also show that hot weather is a larger driver than cool weather to Yellow Pages directories.

As this data indicates, consumers who reference air-conditioning contractors and systems through a Yellow Pages directory are likely to consider a larger number of businesses before making their purchase—and willing to spend a lot, too. That means that those local businesses who invest in advertising in this category have a higher likelihood of attracting the high-quality local leads they seek the most.

For more information, read our press release about air conditioning references.

July 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
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Google’s Android Jumps in Share; Smartphones Stay Hot

Friday, July 9, 2010

Over the past months, we’ve seen Yellow Pages companies launch apps for mobile devices for iPhone, Android and other wireless platforms that help local searchers find business information on the go.

It seems like much of the attention has been focused around the apps developed for iPhone and iPad.  But the buzz about Android continues to grow, suggesting that we can’t forget about other mobile operating systems.

Consider this new data from comScore I saw at fortune.com:  Android had some significant gains in market share between February and May of this year, moving from 9% to 13% of smartphone subscribers.  That’s the biggest jump of any platform – in fact, all the other mobile platforms (RIM, Apple, Microsoft, and Palm) lost some share during that some time period.

And according to the comScore numbers, mobile is hot all around.  By the end of May, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones – that’s up 8.1% from the previous period.  Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

This growth presents plenty of opportunity to local search companies.  As we know, new features and hardware are constantly emerging that drive people to download the next great OS or purchase a new device.  We have to keep up with these trends, understand how consumers use mobile so that we continue to be the most trusted, most accurate, and most convenient source to find a local business when you need it.

July 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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Yellow Pages Group Launches iPad App

Thursday, June 17, 2010

As Apple’s iPad continues to gain popularity worldwide, Canada’s Yellow Pages Group announced this week that it is the latest Yellow Pages company to introduce a free iPad app.  Previously, Yellowbook, Avantar, and Yellow Magic introduced new apps designed for the tablet device.

YPG’s app—which comes on the heels of the company’s announcement in May that its mobile apps have attracted one million downloads—features business and residential search, reverse phone look-up, local proximity-based search and a “favorites” tool. Additionally, users can view video clips on participating merchants’ pages and share listing results with others via e-mail or text message.

Greg Sterling at Screenwerk also notes that the app links to other YPG properties including Urbanizer, Restuarantica and RedFlagDeals.com.

You can download YPG’s iPad app here. It’s great to see that a growing number of our members are embracing this exciting new technology and creating added value for both our local business clients and consumers.

June 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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AT&T Interactive and Citysearch Announce Distribution Agreement

Friday, May 7, 2010

This week, we’ve discussed the importance of multi-platform advertising for local businesses seeking to reach ready-to-buy consumers wherever they are. Now, I’m eager to highlight the significance of inter-platform advertising opportunities as a means of generating additional visibility and leads.

On the digital front, our industry is not only expanding the reach of Internet Yellow Pages directories, we’re also partnering with a variety of popular local search sites including Yelp and Citysearch in an effort to provide our clients with more ways to reach online consumers.

This week, AT&T Interactive—which recently rebranded its flagship YP.COM and added new features to its YPMobile app—became the latest Yellow Pages company to announce a new distribution agreement with Citysearch. The move comes just a month after Dex One and Citysearch entered into a similar partnership.

Under the new arrangement, sponsored listings from YP.COM will have the opportunity to appear on CityGrid, Citysearch’s extensive local content and advertising network. The new agreement builds on an existing relationship between Citysearch and AT&T Interactive where Citysearch listings, user reviews and editorial content have the opportunity to be displayed on YP.COM.

Additionally, YP.COM advertisers will have the opportunity to place ads alongside content on Citysearch or other CityGrid publisher web properties, and CityGrid reseller partners will have access to distribute advertising across YP.COM.

This open arrangement benefits local businesses by allowing them to explore new, exciting online advertising opportunities— all within their established Yellow Pages marketing strategies.

For more information, read the full AT&T Interactive and Citysearch release here.

May 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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YP Advertisers: Data Drives Decisions

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Charles Laughlin from BIA/Kelsey moderated an advertiser panel today.  The key takeaway: data drives marketing decisions.

“I like monthly reports with as much detail tracking as possible,” said George Bochanis, Esq., owner of George T. Bochanis Law Offices.  “It seems like the technology is increasing every year.  I would love to have something that shows tracking, timing, calls – whatever is available.”

Shannon Rodman, director, YPMG Marketing Ops, ServiceMaster, talked about the difference data can make in an organization where stores are a mix of company owned and franchised.  In the economic downturn, the company-owned stores have maintained ad levels with print Yellow Pages.  Franchisees, however, have been skeptical and want to move to Internet-based marketing tools.

“We need to go them to stay in the directory,” said Rodman.  “They need to see that the books are delivering and they need to stay in the directories.”

Chris Heilbock, regional vice president of national sales from Yellowbook and ServiceMaster account rep commented that franchisees are coming back to print Yellow Pages after other options haven’t worked out.  “Our corporate spender is more stable.  They’ve done measurement and understand the marketplace.  A lot of the franchise owners are influenced by other people around them without other statistics or data.  We’re seeing some of that come back now.  They’ve tried some other things and they’re coming back to what they had before.”

Bill Brewer, regional vice president of sales for SuperMedia, said building systems to give advertisers performance metrics is a key priority.  “We’ve doubled our testing budgets year over year for the last three years now.  We think it’s key to the future growth of all of our platforms.”

April 20, 2010 | 1 Comment
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The How and Why of Yellow Pages Association Research

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Yesterday we released new data from Burke that showed  both strong reach and trust for Yellow Pages products.  I thought today I’d explain a little bit more about how and why we collect these data.

YPA has conducted research to understand consumer use of our products for years.  We make these data available to our members who use it as competitive intelligence, and we release it to analysts and media to help them understand our role in local search and generating leads for local businesses.

About two years ago, we realized we needed to reinvent our data collection process.  Our previous usage study had become antiquated – it only polled consumers via land line telephone interviews and it did not measure the reach of other sources of local business information.

Those two deficiencies were critical.  Internet and cell phones have made land line-only surveys unreliable since many in certain demographics no longer use land lines.  And as media fragmented, consumers started searching for local information by consulting multiple sources.  Add that Yellow Pages companies now partner with search engines, offer SEO/SEM services, and even provide direct mail, and it’s easy to see we needed a much broader perspective on media used for local search.

So we commissioned the research firm Burke to create a completely new survey.  And thus, our new Local Media Tracking Study was created.

Methodology

We wanted the sample to represent the overall population.  Here’s how we achieved a fair representation of American consumers:

  • Multi-mode data collection with 80% online and 20% telephone participants.
  • A balanced-screening method to ensure the survey sample is in proportion to the actual U.S. adult population – including age and geography (urban, suburban, and rural).
  • Interviewing spread across all days of the week and all weeks of the year.
  • The survey took about 20 minutes, on average, to complete.
  • Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.
  • Goal was to collect 8,000 interviews over a 12-month period.  For the 2009 analysis, we actually conducted 8,062 interviews.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed to measure a number of key areas including reach, annual references, and perceptions – data points that we released yesterday.

For reach, the question asked was:  “We would like to know when, if ever, you last used some potential sources to look up information to find a business, or to shop or look for a product or service in your local area. Please include your use at home, at work, or elsewhere.”  Then we listed a number of options including print Yellow Pages, Internet Yellow Pages, search engines, magazines, newspapers, etc. in a random order, so as not to highlight any one option.

To understand perceptions about the Yellow Pages and search engines, the interviewer read a series of statements.  The instructions were as follows:  “For each of the statements, please indicate which one of the following media is described best by the statement:  Is the source I trust the most for finding local business information; Is the most accurate source for finding local business information.”

To calculate annual print references, Burke uses a formula that estimates the percent of use against the total U.S. adult population.

Future of the Local Media Tracking Study

In addition to the 2009 reach and trust data, we collected other information from consumers that we plan to release soon, including brand awareness at the time of search and post-search actions for Yellow Pages products.

We’re also continuing to collect data in 2010, which means we’ll have a new set of data points next year.  What’s most exciting about that is we can trend the year over year data, so we’ll see how print Yellow Pages and Internet Yellow Pages are doing compared to the wider local search universe.

I am extremely pleased with the first Local Media Tracking study.  I believe it achieves the objectives we set out to accomplish, providing YPA members and observers with thought-provoking data based on the most acceptable research methodology we’ve ever used.

March 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces 2010 Continues…

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Off to a fast start yesterday, with the “Clients Only” session and then Jon Brod’s (EVP – AOL Ventures) keynote, BIA/Kelsey Marketplaces 2010 is in full swing. Brod announced AOL’s intention to launch patch.org, a foundation aimed at improving life in under-served communities.

Quoted in MediaPost, Brod laid out AOL’s strategy, which will allow patch.org to partner with community foundations. “This is a charitable foundation with all profits being returned to communities we serve,” he said. “We believe local information is the most important and helpful information people want and need.  And we are committed to filling this need in society without regard to economic status.”

This morning, we heard from a different segment beginning with Craig Smith, CEO – ServiceMagic. Founded in 1999 and now producing $150 million in lead fees, Craig offered the controversial opinion that, “the recession is a good thing, what we needed to kick start innovation.” He stated that during the past 10 years, the power has shifted from the publisher to the advertiser, because of the “thousands of ways” to advertise. His answer?  Provide more value to ensure long-term advertiser loyalty.

And he advises to remember that the consumer wants the search to be easy, and they want the right pro the first time.

Since word of mouth continues to be the most powerful influencer, ServiceMagic has created “Ask a Reviewer” to ensure that the consumer community can offer advice about local service providers.

Smith went into their strategy to accelerate growth and invited others in the audience to consider taking more risk and considering disruptive business models, while investing in long term value propositions with their customers.

Next up was the Engines of Vertical Search Panel, featuring:

This briskly-paced panel covered the three wheels of vertical search – search, directory listings and inventory-based classified listings.

Some stand-out points:

  • Advertisers, even small ones, are looking for transparency in results and easy-to-follow dashboards that demonstrate how their spend translates into transactions.
  • 42% of small and medium-sized businesses don’t want to grow their business, but they can still be reached with marketing solutions if approached from a different perspective – staying connected with existing customers and managing their reputation.
  • Anchor identity (name, phone numbers, email addresses, locations) and descriptive content (accreditation, images, keywords, video, licensing, etc.) must remain fresh, accurate and be revisited on a consistent basis to ensure strong SEO results.
  • And for those in search and search advertising, Listings = Content = Ads

There’s more to come on the agenda today and tomorrow, and additional coverage at the BIA/Kelsey blog.  Tonight – MojoPages is sponsoring an evening under the Big Top!

March 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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