• by Mark Canon , August 12, 2004

Paid search revolutionized marketing and advertising with the emergence of precision-targeted ads based on user-generated queries coupled with pay-for-performance pricing, detailed reporting, and ROI calculations. But, it is Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) that represent the latest advancement in the development of targeted online advertising.

Internet Yellow Pages extend the benefits of search to include precision targeting at the local level and a more qualified audience of ready-to-buy consumers actively looking to purchase specific products and services

Not only does IYP advertising offer specific benefits not found in other media, but research by leading data providers shows that IYP is an extremely cost effective vehicle for advertisers to reach qualified buyers.

According to the Kelsey Group, the cost per contact generated by a print Yellow Pages reference is just over $1. Recent data gathered by Piper Jaffray puts the same figure for a paid search listing at 43 cents. But, the cost per lead for IYP listings, again according to Kelsey, is estimated at 14 cents.

This kind of cost efficiency, married to pay-for-performance pricing is likely to broaden, enabling smaller merchants to enter this market. As more advertisers who want to leverage these efficiencies are drawn to IYPs, listings will continue to grow. More ads mean better results, which will bring more users, creating a virtuous circle between advertising content and usage.

Internet Yellow Pages have been growing very steadily, and somewhat quietly, in the shadows of the hype around efforts by major search engines to replicate the IYP experience. The reasons are fairly simple - IYPs provide the most effective search experience - and the best results - to users seeking local businesses, while also providing extremely cost-effective marketing solutions to national and local buyers. IYPs provide the most effective local search solution for local merchants and the best results to users seeking local businesses.

With an increasing number of users accessing local search via IYP network partners such as America Online, Knight-Ridder Digital, and Gannett News outlets, in addition to Yahoo!, Google, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, and other search engines, IYPs have consistently seen their usage figures rise during the past year, while also seeing the number of advertiser partners rise, concomitant with the sorts of products only IYPs can provide.

For users, the structured data of an IYP search makes their local search take far less time than it would on any other medium. Why look for a needle in a haystack? At the same time, to a local advertiser who is paying for clicks, IYPs make the most sense because only users who have sought listings within a given region will click on this advertiser's listing - there are no mistaken clicks, or wasted dollars.