It's Hard to Sell Ads to Plumbers
October 28, 2004
For some odd reason I find the Yellow Pages interesting, always have. There's something about them that just reeks of...opportunity. Apparently Google agrees. They inked a deal with BellSouth's Yellow Pages unit, a deal which let's BellSouth resell AdWords. In other words, this is a new strategy for Google - BellSouth is the first ever company to have rights to resell Google's AdWords. If it works, it may have far reaching implications.
So why did they do it? Local, local, local. It's very hard to sell AdWords to plumbers. The Yellow Pages have reps who already sell ads to them. It's all about the trenches in the Local market.
I've covered the YP before, here and here and here.
Release in extended entry. Also, see SEW coverage.
Comments
ServiceMagic (an IACI company) is doing a great job signing up thousands of local merchants (mostly home-related service providers) to their platform. I've been using them for things like sprinkler installation, drywall repair, dry rot repair, and when I talk with the advertisers ServiceMagic hooks me up with, they routinely say they're getting 30-90% of their business from ServiceMagic, and FAR less from the yellow pages than they used to.
There's a stampede going on right now on the part of the YP's to be selling PPC, and no shortage of startups trying to be intermediaries between GOOG/YHOO and the local merchants.
Interesting times, but GOOG/YHOO will come out on top, as they own the traffic.
With the ink still drying on its wacky deal to sell online advertising for Google, BellSouth has topped itself by announcing an Internet yellow pages joint venture with SBC Communications. And if that isn't enough, the new joint venture has announced that it is finalizing a deal to acquire Internet start-up YellowPages.com. The dust hasn't settled sufficiently to know if the new joint venture will also be selling online advertising for Google, but hey, why not?
What's going on here? Great question. Having had limited success selling to their own home markets, these two regional giants will combine forces so that they can enjoy limited success selling online advertising in their combined home markets. The press release announcing the joint venture proudly notes that it will have "50 million monthly consumer searches, giving advertisers increased traffic." Actually, the new joint venture's Web site will certainly get increased traffic, but the local auto body shop in Macon, Georgia isn't likely to, and therein lies the rub: yellow pages owes all it success to advertising from local businesses serving local markets.
The big yellow pages publishers have always been long on cash and ambition and short on creativity. That's why it's not all that surprising that when they want some fresh new ideas, they pull out their checkbooks and buy some. In this case, the fresh ideas are being supplied by YellowPages.com, a seven-year old Internet start-up, which is being acquired for possibly as much as $150 million, according to some press reports. Do the math: even yellow pages publishers wouldn’t pay that much for a domain name. What they’re really trying to buy is a clue.
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