The Yellow Pages Association chief's take on mobile

By Mickey Alam Khan

December 3, 2008

Hello yellow

What is the Yellow Pages Association's stance on mobile?

Yellow Pages publishers last year posted $31 billion in worldwide revenue, of which the United States accounted for $14.3 billion. Three million advertisers use the Yellow Pages to reach the local market, generating 13.4 billion consumer references via print Yellow Pages and 3.8 billion searches through Internet Yellow Pages.

Yet even as the Yellow Pages publishers grapple with threat from Google and Yahoo, along comes mobile. In this interview, Yellow Pages Association president Neg Norton outlines his association and its members' take on mobile and how Yellow Pages publishers can adapt to this new market channel. Read on …

What is the Yellow Pages Association's view on mobile?
We think it's a big opportunity that is beginning to happen now due to the success of the iPhone.

As more iPhone-like devices come to the market, the bigger the opportunity is for the Yellow Pages industry.

Neg Norton is president of the Yellow Pages Association

What is the extent of your membership's presence on mobile?
Most of the major Internet Yellow Pages sites are distributing their content on wireless devices.

YellowPages.com [owned by AT&T], for example, is on the iPhone. SuperPages.com is on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile.

What role will mobile play for the Yellow Pages industry?
Mobile fits the Yellow Pages strategy of making information available anytime, anywhere.

Accessed shopping guide or price comparison services at least once per month. Source: comScore M:Metrics

Additionally, we believe wireless access affords us the opportunity to attract new customers beyond those who purchase print and Internet advertising.

Give us a hypothetical example of that.
Fast food.

Elaborate.
Decisions that are made on the go, such as fast food, will really become much more attractive to prospects with wireless advertising.

Which industries do you think will be naturals for mobile?
In my opinion, as the wireless search experience improves, many of the things you search today on the computer you'll search on wireless, if it's more convenient to the consumer.

In my view, most of the mobile searching today would be for restaurants [and] hotels, but I think the mobile device is going to become a more ubiquitous searching platform over time.

What's holding your members back from mobile?
I think the monetization isn't that great right now as it is with the Internet and print.

But certainly our members are planting seeds in the wireless space, because they do believe it's a big opportunity over time.

Google and Yahoo -- how do you handle them, both as partners and competitors?
Our advantage over search engines is we're searching into a structured database.

So the consumer should always get a very relevant local search result.

If one of your members wanted to go mobile, where do you start?
It's a carrier-driven environment right now.

Until there's a more open environment, it's really a process of negotiating your content with carriers.

How would that play out?
Just like SuperPages did. They struck a deal with Verizon Wireless and it's a featured service with Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile.

You have only four major carriers and how many members?
More than that.

Given all these hurdles, what's the case you make for mobile to your members?
Smart-searching devices are already in the market and expected to increase dramatically and that's an opportunity to deliver business leads to your customers.

It's an additional opportunity to deliver leads and it's an additional opportunity to attract new types of advertisers.

Would you recommend mobile as part of a multichannel mix?
I would.

If you endorse the concept of anytime, anywhere access to local business information, wireless is a must.

So what's your plan for mobile in 2009?
I think it's continuing to put things into the market and I think it's continuing to experiment with product development and business models.

The advertiser can go advertise through several ways on mobile. Why go through the Yellow Pages?
Many consumers like the familiarity of a Yellow Pages site when doing local commercial searching. They're familiar with the Yellow Pages environment.

Comments on "The Yellow Pages Association chief's take on mobile"

1. Joseph Constanty says:

   December 30, 2008 at 4:14am

   Whether it is mobile or online, the biggest problem that I see as the founder of NextStepDirectory.com is that Yellow Pages and even SERs do not give enough qualified information. If you look at most Yellow Pages, they simply take the paper version and drop it on your 22-inch monitor, they don't take advantage of what the Web offers as a community space. Yes, they put some maps in there, but that is about as far as it gets. We see directories as information portals that are dynamic and "alive" with user comments, uploads, ratings, maps, mobile and more. Yellow Pages isn't doing it, and neither are the search engines.
   Yelp.com does it for restaurants, some travel Web sites provide such services for their niche market, but there does not exist a common depository online.

2. Jim Ryan says:

   December 24, 2008 at 1:45pm

   I think there is some spin here. First of all, YP has to convert $31B industry to Internet and Mobile search platforms. To suggest that consumers have a preference because familiarity of Yellow Pages, when Google currently controls 65 -70% of all on-line search. I am one who believes the IYP is very cumbersome compared to Google. One last thought - Google has MAPS, better technology, more eyeballs (most of IYP traffic is non-organic from Google SERPS - and they have the money. So who wins?

3. James Simonetta says:

   December 4, 2008 at 10:58pm

   Sensis has had a Yellow Mobile presence for the last 2 years and is ramping up the channel to advertisers.
   
   http://m.yellow.com.au

4. Michael Slawin says:

   December 3, 2008 at 10:32am

   So the takeaway here is that the YellowPages is still a relevent player in the search world. Although there is room for smaller search engines, in my opinion Google is where it's at. Some of my clients do have a presence on YellowPages.com; they have a future certainly. But with growth of Google I think that future is less than rosy.