Welcome to YP Talk

In this week's edition

Whether you want to talk about it or not, of all the many components of marketing, s_x seems to sell, especially online. We've purposely had to misspell "the word" or there was a good chance your spam filter would be blocking this entire article.

For years, the Yellow Pages industry has walked a fine line between which headings are "acceptable" and which are not in the print products. Publishers have tried everything from limiting the kinds of photography in an ad, to the size of the ad, to even dropping any heading which seems to be even remotely relevant to this no-no topic.

The issue will continue to be thorny one as publishers expand their local search/IYP products mostly because the online porn industry already has a thriving business which will eventually try and find its way into local Yellow Pages/IYP search products.

I noticed the following story in one of the MediaPost recently (underlines added):

Since its birth in 1995, no one knows how much ad revenue Craigslist has cost the newspaper and Yellow Pages industries. This year, however, the free classifieds site will generate $100 million in revenue, according to new data from The AIM Group, parent of consulting group Classified Intelligence -- if that's any indication.

That represents an increase of more than 23% from Craigslist's estimated revenue of $81 million in 2008. Not bad for a site that offers community advertising in some 570 markets worldwide, but which only charges for a tiny percentage of its ads, and at a time when many classified ad publishers are reporting year-over-year revenue declines of more than 50%.

With ad spending in all U.S. media having declined 12% during the first quarter of 2009 as compared with the same quarter in 2008 (per Nielsen Co) I find it hard to believe that the introduction of Craigslist alone has truly impacted print Yellow Pages revenue.  All of the media measured declined – Spanish and English-language cable TV survived the best (1.1% for Hispanic stations), while general market cable networks fell 2.7%, followed by Internet display advertising, which declined 3.4%.   Broadcast/Network TV ad spending fell 4.8% during the quarter.  Sunday newspaper supplements took the biggest hit, down 37.7%.  Other media were also affected -- B-to-B magazines (-29.9%), spot TV (-28.9%) and national newspapers (-27.7%).

In all of our lives we run across people who are special, people that seem to light up a room, who always have a good word for everyone (how do they do that?), who operate in the background making our businesses run, and yet you will never see these key people's names prominently listed on an annual report or in the newspaper because they don't seek the limelight. They just get the job done, each day, day in, day out. They make things happen. Without them, nothing would get done and the business would come to a grinding halt. You know who they are. You could probably name a bunch of them right now. Because these people do their thing in the background, they are rarely recognized or acknowledged within their organizations because we all just assume they will always be there. Until one day they are not.

In this article I wanted to recognize one of those people who suddenly passed away last week. Even if you never met him I'm sure you know someone like him.

Alfonso (Al) V. D'Iorio of Pelham, NY died suddenly on June 9, 2009. Al was but 63 years young. Not surprising to all of us who knew him, he suffered an apparent heart attack while on his way to work. Knowing Al, we would never have suspected he would be doing anything but working, except for when he took time to be with his family.

Advertiser / Sponsor Terms and Conditions | Terms of Use

Subscribe to YP Talk | YP Talk Home | Newsletter Archive | Industry News | Contact Us | About KenC | Site Map

Copyright © 2003 - 2009 YP Talk. All rights reserved

Site designed and maintained by eMedia Host