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Who Needs The Yellow Pages?


These stacks of unwanted Yellow Pages guides have been standing in my lobby

by Yori Yanover

For close to a month, these stacks of unwanted Yellow Pages guides have been standing in my lobby, making access to the mailboxes cumbersome and raising the obvious question: How come no one’s taking these free gifts? The answer is simple: We’re all either using broadband for all our business communications needs, or we stopped caring. If we need the YP, we can go to their website.

I remember, not too long ago, you used to fight with your neighbors over the YP. A full page ad there cost a pretty penny. And the ultimate act of macho cool was when a movie detective, crammed into a phone booth (you may recall those), tore off the YP page he needed and stashed it in his cheap-suit pocket.

I have no idea what it costs to advertise in the YP these days. Can’t be much – because no one will touch the suckers. Although I’m told you can find fantastic deals in the YP on Atari game modules… (It was either that or Commodore 64 computers – laugh at the punchline that best suits your cultural milieu).

How many trees are they cutting down to make these things? Oh, man, there’s nothing like being self righteous on a Sunday morning. Clears up the sinuses!

Go out, people, it’s a clear a chilly, sunny October weekend morning – use it while supply lasts. Oh, and pick up your copy of YP from the lobby – they provide endless joy to small children and pets. OK, not endless, some joy, perhaps.

I’m outa’ here.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yori:

Where do I start? You’ve asked some excellent questions, so here’s the facts (most of which come from the Yellow Pages Association – site: http://www.ypassociation.org):

Who needs the Yellow Pages? US adults referenced them over 15 billion times last year. And that’s just the print versions. 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? And let’s remember that not everyone has Internet access to reference those websites you are talking about.

To your question about cost to advertising, a multi-page full page color ad can easily run over $100k a year. At that rate, you had better believe that Yellow Pages works for businesses and makes their phone ring. The largest advertiser spends over $60 million nationwide.

How many dead trees? Interesting thing is the total amount of paper that the Yellow Pages industry uses in one year (a good percentage of which is recycled), is far less than the newspaper industry uses in just ONE WEEK. If you find that hard to believe, just take a look at the Sunday NY Times you are reading today and do the math. Compare that with that book sitting in your lobby…

There is no other directional media that can provide buyers the information they need when they need it about local businesses than the Yellow Pages. It is truly the original local search engine….

So be sure to get down to that lobby and get your copy

10/22/2006 12:40 PM  

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