The Internet has emerged as a new marketplace and a primary medium for reaching and influencing consumers. Consumers are increasing the number of purchases they make directly through the Internet. Which consumers use the Internet to make online purchases? This paper reviews data from Simmons (Spring 2011) to identify the key demographic characteristics of those most likely to make purchases online.

“Not all leads are created equal. To illustrate this point, which lead generation program is more appealing? Would you prefer 1,000 anonymous email addresses where you eventually determine only ten to be good prospects? Or would you like one that delivers 100 leads, each of whom is an ideal prospect?” As the quote above suggests, leads from the second source (the one that delivers 100 ideal prospects) would be worth 100 times more than leads from the first source (the one whose leads had only a 1% chance of being a good prospect). If a business is willing to pay $1 per lead for the first source, then they should be willing to pay $100 per lead for the second.

It has been noted in previous studies that ad content is truly king, i.e., ads with great content receive disproportionately greater numbers of calls than other ads. Statistical regressions based on quantifiable factors such as ad size, ad position, color, and market size only account for about 30-40% of variation in call responses – the remainder being due to the content inside the ads. Metered ad results frequently show one ad receiving two to ten times more calls than other ads of the same size in the same heading and directory.

An analysis of the most recent Simmons consumer spending behavior study once again
confirms two major observations about Yellow Pages users:

1. Users of Print directories spend about 28% more than the general
consumer.
2. Users of the Internet Yellow Pages spend about 32% more than the
general consumer.

In a nutshell, Yellow Pages’ products – both print and online – help businesses reach their most valuable customers and prospects!!

Advertisers 2011 Yellow Pages Metered Ad Study

The 2011 Metered Ad study incorporates studies conducted with advertisers both locally by
publishers (AT&T, Supermedia, DexOne, Yellow Book, and Local Insight Media) and nationally
in cooperative efforts between CMRs, LSA, and publishers.
The 2011 Metered Ad database contains over 300,000 separate advertiser studies (400,000
measured lines) conducted in the past 10 years. To insure relevancy to current markets, the 2011
Study uses only ads that appeared in the past 2 to 4 years for all ad types. Approximately 2.5%
of studies were removed as outliers, which left roughly 200,000 ads and 250,000 measured
lines as the basis for this year’s results.

Advertisers realize the full potential value from developed headings in Yellow Pages when they have both an incolumn ad and a display ad.

Past call measurement studies showed that advertisers benefit most from Yellow Pages when they use a combination of a display ad and a space ad to reach different sets of consumers. This analysis has been updated using data from the 2011 Yellow Pages Metered Ad Study with similar, reinforcing results. Only data from 2009 and 2010 directories are used in this study to insure results reflect current market dynamics. There were 1,136 call measurement studies where advertisers purchased both display and space ads in the same heading in the past two year period. The results from the current data are almost identical to results obtained in previous years – verifying that the dynamics of Yellow Pages usage have not changed.

The 2011 Metered Ad Study had 14,671 advertisers with the same size ad (and same UDAC) in the same heading tracked for both 2009 and 2010. These ads were in 771 different directories (ranging from distributions of 2k up to 2.3 million) representing the four largest publishers and were found in 740 different headings.

Across the entire set of ads, calls increased by 10% between 2009 and 2010, from 5.7 million calls in 2009 to 6.3 million calls in 2010. This increase follows a 3% increase in calls observed between 2008 and 2009.

While many people talk about the decline of Yellow Pages, the functionality provided by Yellow Pages is actually seen by advertisers, agencies, and other media as the “future” of advertising. Too few people understand this. Too many people assume that just because Yellow Pages have been around for so long they must be becoming irrelevant. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The needs of businesses and consumers have not changed. Yellow Pages continue to offer advertisers and consumers one of the most efficient ways of communicating and obtaining information about businesses that help consumers in their shopping decisions.

Download the article here – A Relic of the Past or the Future of Advertising.pdf

The Yellow Pages industry typically publishes rankings of headings based on the number of total references to each heading. While reference-based rankings are interesting, there are many other useful ways of comparing and ranking headings that help to emphasize the usage and value of the headings. These additional rankings can also be used as well to emphasize the highly targeted nature of Yellow Pages.

Download the article here – Rankings of YP Headings 2011.pdf

Spend more money and increase the overall ROI? There are not many investment opportunities that offer this dynamic. Yellow Pages does.

The foundation for any advertiser’s Yellow Pages program should be a display ad in the print product for the heading most closely associated with the primary focus of the business. Why? Because the display ad offers the business the best opportunity to communicate information about its business and to sell to its potential customers, and, because the display ad generates the most calls of the many Yellow Pages products. The display ad offers the business a chance to answer the users’ questions, to provide details about their business, to define the benefits a customer receives, and to differentiate themselves from their competition. The majority of Yellow Pages users will be new customers to a business, and new customers predominantly seek out the display ads. These users come to the Yellow Pages ready to make a purchase, but hungry for information that educates, informs, and sells to them.