1) My friends at the Kelsey Group just released their 2007 Global Yellow Pages report. It’s always excellent information and worth the purchase.

Highlights:

• In 2006, worldwide, Yellow Pages generated estimated revenues of US$30.5 billion and estimated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of US$13.6 billion,
• By applying a conservative multiple of 10 times EBITDA, the entire global Yellow Pages industry would have a market valuation of US$136 billion.
• The global Yellow Pages industry employed just over 74,000 people in 2006, more than 41,000 of whom worked in sales or sales management, up from 36,000 in 2004.
• Print Yellow Pages will stay level globally over the next five years.
• By 2011, almost 30 percent of global Yellow Pages revenues will be online, compared with 12.4 percent in 2006.
• Yellow Pages share of the total global advertising pie stands at 7.1 percent.

2) My friends at illumiCell just signed a distribution deal with Idearc that allows the Texas publisher to place its Superpages.com advertisers’ content on an instant messenging local search service provided by illumiCell. Under this agreement, Superpages.com’s performance-based advertisers will be featured over AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM) network. The illumiCell local search service will launch on AIM in the United States in the third quarter of 2007. illumiCell already has a partnership with Yellow Pages Group in Canada.