$17 Billion Target: Local Directories

Alan Mutter pinpoints an old-is-new opportunity — the next wave of competition for the local directory market, put at $17 billion. The players here — incumbent Yellow Pages, newspapers, local broadcasters and Google, each with too-numerous strengths and weaknesses to note here. Good post on a serious pot of money that should get new focus for local news companies of all kinds.

1. 

   Barry Graubart says:

   April 2, 2010 at 8:38 am

   Ken,
   I agree this is a huge opportunity, both from the standpoint of the advertising dollars as well as the specific issue of who will become the dominant player to replace the existing YP products.

   For the latter, I find it interesting that no one has really put together a better yellow page product yet. Had hopes for Yelp, but try searching for “tree removal” in zip code 10533 and it’s useless. As much as I am “Mr. Digital”, I still find myself using printed yellow pages when I need local services like electrician, plumber, etc. The online versions are all junk (national advertisers come up on top of every search when I want a plumber in my town).

   As for the bigger question of local ad $, I think this will be one of the interesting battles of the next 2-3 years. Just as it was “accidental” that department stores like Macy’s funded foreign press bureaus in the traditional newspaper market, I don’t think local directories are necessarily the best advertising vehicle for most businesses. Sure, they still make sense for the plumber or electrician, whom you only call when you have an emergency, but for many local services, they are the wrong platform.
   This should be where social media (hyper-local blogs, news, personal recommendations, etc) can make its play, but time will tell.
2. 

   Ken Doctor says:

   April 3, 2010 at 2:18 pm

   Indeed. And where does Ångie’s List fit here. It’s one of few new subscription products we’ve paid for in the past few years. The List here in San Jose has a critical list of customer reviews, and we’ve used it more than a dozen times. Not only does it find us above-average service people, but it keeps them honest when you call and say you found them on AngiesList — they know that the potential of bad review is there if they underperform. In a sense, AngiesList is that social media, and by being sub-based, it keeps a lot of useless comments out. How it scales, I don’t know yet….