I can remember the first time I had my name appear in the phone book after I purchased my first home. Like Steve Martin in the movie “The Jerk”, I danced around and shouted, “I’m somebody now”. Back then of course, I think computers were something in sci-fi movies, and the Internet had not yet been thought about. But I can still see that brand new version of the white pages all clean and crisp with my name right there alongside the other 30 people that shared my name.
I was recently watching television when the new Dex advertisement came on and I had a trip down memory lane. I am still amazed that anyone would be spending much time looking at a Yellow page book in the modern era of finding everything through search. I think the last time I used a yellow pages directory it was for a booster seat for the kids to reach the table better.
Then I saw a related article recently put out by eMarketer.com. The article states that online local advertising will reach 2.9 billion in 2007, which is only 13.4% of the total online advertising market. The study and article are an interesting look at local advertising. It made me wonder about the dollars being spent on traditional offline products such as the yellow pages. I also wondered whether what they were being told about the results they would get as business owners and placing the ads.
I can remember the game back in the day of Yellow page advertising, companies wanted to somehow be listed first in their niche. If they had a plumbing business, they would call it AAA Plumbing, because then they would be listed as the first alphabetical result listing in the book. We are not that far off now with the way companies are clamoring for that all important number 1 placement in search results. Now we are doing it with SEO and other tactics. The ideal is still the same and that is to be that first listed business under plumbing. Even though advertising is drastically changing since the old days, in some respects it stays the same.
Those books you remember are still very much in use. Last year alone they were referenced over 15 billion times. 90% of all adults reference them at least once a year, 75% in a typical month, and 50+% on average month. How about on average 1.4X each week?
The myth that the Internet is all we need is just that – a myth. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the broadband market is about tapped out. There will always be a good percentage of the population that will never have access to the industry’s Internet products. Barely more than 50% of households in the U.S. (about 56 million homes), currently subscribe to a high-speed Internet service. An additional 21 million households still use dial-up connections (yes, you read that right – dial-up connections).