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.

Businesses can increase the business and value they obtain from the Yellow Pages by placing ads in multiple directories. Each directory expands the reach of the business to additional prospective customers.

The 2010 Metered Ad Study contained 2,657 cases in 2008 and 2009 where a single advertiser had display ads in multiple directories for the same heading (and each ad had a unique phone number). The data show that placing ads in multiple directories is an effective way to gain more business.

It is frequently said that young adults rarely use Yellow Pages. It is said that they have grown up on the Internet and have little use for an “old” product such as Yellow Pages. But is this true?

We will review what the data say about this. But, even before we examine the data, we need first ask: “Do we expect young adults to have much measurable usage of Yellow Pages?”