Great presentation by Charles Laughlin today at the Kelsey Group conference. He presented the various perception issues that are currently plaguing the directory publishing industry and exposed the reality based on various data points.
Perception 1: the Yellow Pages medium is already dead, the corpse just does not know it yet. Reality: as Yellow Pages transitions from single to multi-product, some will survive, some will not.
Perception 2: today, only luddites use the printed Yellow Pages. Reality: they do but other uses it too, but not as frequently as they once did.
Perception 3: Yellow Pages is way too expensive. Reality: the ROI on Yellow Pages remains very high vs. other media.
Perception 4: advertisers are better off dropping all print Yellow Pages in favor of more online ads, SEM, SEO. Reality: depending on heading, it would be difficult to replace print Yellow Pages leads with any one source.
Perception 5: Yellow Pages is the media equivalent of a smoke-belching coal fired power plant. Reality: title inflation has fueled this perception but Yellow Pages’ landfill contribution is still smaller than newspapers, diapers and magazines.
Update: Perry Evans (CEO of [praized subtype=”small” pid=”2b09598567e5ee9f95e9135ca5e4459d2f” type=”badge” dynamic=”true”]) has a survey on his blog related to this topic.
Seb Provencher's Blog 
As I begin to follow the Yellow Pages industry more and more it astonishes me how similar it is to the newspaper industry. In this post you could have switched the word Yellow Pages with the word newspapers.
As I begin to follow the Yellow Pages industry more and more it astonishes me how similar it is to the newspaper industry. In this post you could have switched the word Yellow Pages with the word newspapers.
@Matt Sokoloff: I would say one of the major differences between the YP and the newspaper industry is editorial vs. advertising content. YP is all about advertising content, there’s no “church and state” situation between editorial room and the sales team like in newspapers. It creates less internal conflict in those changing times.
@Matt Sokoloff: I would say one of the major differences between the YP and the newspaper industry is editorial vs. advertising content. YP is all about advertising content, there’s no “church and state” situation between editorial room and the sales team like in newspapers. It creates less internal conflict in those changing times.