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12/02/2007 - USA Dex sets record in Yellow Pages ad sales
Competition from online directories hasn’t stopped Colorado Springs consumers from using a relic of the pre-Internet age — the Yellow Pages.
Dex Media Inc. sold a record 1,365 pages of advertising in its 2007 directory, up 14.3 percent from last year as the Denver-based telephone directory publisher sold more full-page ads to home-improvement firms for coupons and restaurants to display their menus.
Dex this week began distributing 686,000 copies of its full directory and a small companion book without white pages listings. Yellow Book USA Inc. distributed its Springs directory in December and Idearc Media Corp. will distribute its directory next month.
“Yellow Pages have remained quite strong,” said Matt Kremer, regional market manager for Dex in Aurora. "Nobody is going to bother to turn on their computer to find a plumber when the pipes break. People pick up the book when they have their wallet open.”
Yellow Book didn’t fare as well as Dex this year. After nearly matching Dex in advertising pages last year, the Uniondale, N.Y.-based independent directory publisher sold 1,132 pages in its 2006-07 directory, a 2.3 percent decline from 2005-06.
While Yellow Book’s directory got smaller, the amount of advertising has grown at double-digit rates during the past two years, said company spokesman John Hartz.
The company often trims fill-in ads and promotional material from its directories to keep them compact.
“We carefully manage the size of our directories to make sure they are something that consumers can use and easily handle,” Hartz said.
No information was available on Idearc’s 2007 directory; the same directory last year included 562 pages of advertising. The company was spun off from Verizon Communications Inc. in November and has a 30-year agreement to publish its directories.
Yellow Page revenue growth nationwide has averaged about 3 percent a year since 2000 to $16 billion in 2005, a trend expected to continue, said David Goddard, editor of the
Yellow Pages Group at Simba Information Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based media industry analysis firm.
Most of that growth has come from independent publishers such as Yellow Book and Idearc, Goddard said. The bulk of the industry’s revenue growth is coming online, from Web sites like Yellowpages.com, Super Pages.com, and Yellow Book’s site that are linked to print phone books.
“This industry is growing because they have a tremendous wealth of information that people want — information down to the smallest business in the smallest community — and that has made it a very competitive business,” Goddard said.
“Some people would say there’s no sizzle” in phone books, said Stephanie Hobbs, vice president of communications for the Berkeley Heights, N.J.-based industry trade organization Yellow Pages Association.
“But believe me, when you can make the kind of money advertisers can make off their ad, when you see large venture capital companies lining up to buy them, I would say that’s the definition of a thriving industry.”
Dex made gains locally last year by expanding sections devoted to full-pages ads featuring restaurant menus and full-page ads with coupons from a variety of businesses.
The restaurant menu section grew from 23 to 75 listings, and coupons jumped from 13 to 64 pages.
The company also reported growth in listings from home improvement businesses ranging from plumbers, garage door contractors and locksmiths as well as in less-traditional business categories like coffee houses, alternative health care, pilates and yoga.
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