Charles Laughlin: State of the Yellow Pages Nation & Predictions
Posted by Sebastien on the 2008/09/15 at 04:40
in Charles Laughlin, Conferences, DMS ‘08, Directory Publishers, Kelsey Group, Local, Local Search, Strategy, Trends -
Continuing Charles Laughlin’s kick-off presentation at the Kelsey Group DMS ‘08 conference, he gave a state of the Yellow Pages nation.
Where are we today?
- Print revenues are declining – in most places – with pace accelerating (US, most of Europe, exception: Australia, Canada, Yellow Book in the US)
- Belief in product eroding in many areas – including among many within the industry
- Economy is a factor – but long-term shift also at play
- Many publishers are successfully making the single product – multi-product transition
- Other publishers risk long term viability by not making the shift quickly enough.
What will the winners do?
- Measure everything and embrace transparency
- Invest in sales transformation
- Leverage technology to enable transformation
- Recognize and protect core assets
- Ruthlessly shed the rest
- Continue to invest and believe in print
Predictions (by 2013)
- US print titles circulation will decline by 30%
- Printed residential white pages reduced to minimal on-request print run
- At least one global publisher divests its print Yellow Pages business
- Professional services advertisers will have largely shifted from print to online
- Print revenues in home services advertisers (ex: plumbers) will remain stable
- Self-provisioning will account for 25% of directional media sales
More on the Kelsey Group blog.
[...] may want to subscribe to my company RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I got here a bit late so here are Sebastien’s thoughts on Charles Laughlin’s opening presentation on the state of the yellow pages [...]