Yellow Pages Services
The yellow pages industry has long been criticized by advertisers and agencies alike for the lack of credible, independent, third party research. Everyone agrees that the yellow pages industry needs an equivalent to what Nielsen ratings are in television or Arbitron in radio. The truth is the yellow pages trade associations have included syndicated research on their objectives and initiatives lists for just as long as Nielsen or Arbitron.
Many factors make independent research more critical than ever:
• increasing pressure throughout the advertising industry at large for more and better measurement of audience, usage and results
• increasing number of directories—including large and small independents, foreign language, and utility overlays—with decreasing market share per directory
• 6,000 directories are published, with about 3,500 utility books affiliated with a ‘utility local exchange carrier’; over 37% of these receive less than 20% usage in their respective markets, and only 4% receive the 80+% usage that was once routinely enjoyed by utility publishers
• increased market share by internet yellow pages (IYP) relative to print
The yellow pages industry is finally responding, and now there are several solutions in varying stages of implementation: Knowledge Networks/Statistical Research Institute (KN/SRI), Directory Share Ratings (DSR), and comScore.
Knowledge Networks/SRI
The KN/SRI project is supported by the two trade associations and the major utility publishers, including AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon and RH Donnelley. Its strength is widespread support by all the major players and, consequently, strong funding. Its major drawback is the lack of support by the independent publishers (Yellow Book, Valley Yellow Pages, etc.), who feel its methodologies are biased in favor of the utility publishers and against the independents. This is a hard objection to overcome, since KN/SRI’s funding is from the same constituency toward which they are accused of showing bias.
Directory Market Ratings
DSR, on the other hand, is an independent joint venture between David Glazer, longtime marketing research provider to the industry, and Jim and Kelly Abt, long-time YP agency owners. DSR describes itself as “the only comprehensive, syndicated, third-party yellow pages usage service available.” Their revenue comes solely from its subscriber base, so they will need significant subscription growth to continue their service and effectively compete with SRI’s service in the future.
comScore
comScore promotes their Media Metrix division as “the preferred source of Internet audience measurement for ad agencies, publishers, marketers and financial analysts.” They are generally recognized within our industry as the leading source of IYP usage, and the major IYP providers make the comScore/Media Metrix data available to CMRs. Given that IYP advertising is inherently measurable by hits and click-throughs, we use the syndicated usage to evaluate competing product options in a given market and modify that according to real-time results of purchased advertising.
Our Position on Third Party Research
We subscribe to DSR because we feel their results are more objective and accurate than what we anticipate from KN/SRI. We hope more CMRs decide to participate and feel it is in the industry’s best interest to have this available as an alternative to the utility publisher-funded KN/SRI service. We are actively incorporating DSR research into our proposals and feel it gives us a competitive advantage.
|
