Recently I attended the 2006 Annual Yellow Pages Publishers Conference in Orlando, FL. There were 650 attendees from North America, Europe, and Australia.

The conference began with an overview on the state of the advertising industry. We are in an area of Permission Based Marketing. Consumers, who have been inundated with some 2,000 advertising messages a day, are finally taking control.

Network television has seen a drop in viewer ship and in advertising revenues. This is expected to continue as the DR (digital video recorders) are expected to be in 70% of households by 2008.

Troublesome to television executives is a recent research study that showed that 95% of DR users “bleep” commercials.

The growth of Satellite radio, the IPOD, and streaming audio over the Internet have allowed radio listeners some commercial free options as well. Newspapers have seen a drop in circulation and revenues too.

The fact is that we can get our news faster from a variety of sources over the Internet. In addition to this, consumers are very environmentally focused and old newspapers piling up at the door is the number one reason newspaper subscription is declining.

There is good news for Yellow Page directories. Usage is up (4%) over 2005. In fact the number of references to yellow pages directories has not declined at all from where they were 15 years ago.

In the Top 300 Headings there has been substantial growth. The research is provided by third party providers such as SRI/Knowledge Networks, Simba and CRM Associates.

The new Yellow Pages Monitor (fashioned after Nielsen) has indexed and measured usage for over 2,500 of the 7,000 directories in the US market.

It is a welcome addition as national advertisers faced with multiple directories in a given market can finally be provided with some solid research on which directory best meets their target and sales objectives.

John Battelle author of “The Search” was the most impressive of the key note speakers. At one point he demonstrated the challenges the IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) publishers have in meeting the needs of their users.

I have experienced similar frustrations and am reminded of when I searched for “kids pajamas” on Google. In this example the search results offered Lands End. I clicked, found the kids pajamas I wanted and had them delivered to my door in three days. It was all too convenient.

When I plugged “kids pajamas” into several IYP publisher sites I received the message: “search not found” and in one case “heading not found”. IYP publishers have a ways to go in developing their products but it was encouraging to learn that some headway is being made.

One publisher I know is exploring solutions such as linking Key Words from ads as part of search results. I was very excited to get John Battelle to sign my book.

“The Search” is a very important piece of our history and I will pass it on to my children. I wonder: will they enjoy it as much as I did? And, I wonder what Google, Yahoo, MSN and Superpages.com will look like then?

The recently published Yellow Pages 2006 Facts and Media Guide prepared by the Yellow Pages Association points to continued revenue growth for the $14.2 billion dollar Yellow Pages Industry.

There are several reasons why Yellow Pages continue to be successful when the other media have had a struggle to maintain market share.

But first, here is a summary of the facts:

There are over 200 Yellow Pages Publishers, 7,000 directories or 542 million copies reaching 99% of North American house holds

Yellow Pages usage is strong with references 16 billion the same as the last five years

References to the top 300 headings has increased

Value is high with average ROI (return on investment) 27:1 over 6 times the ROI of traditional media

90% of references buy. 4 out of 10 are new customers

Usage of the Yellow Pages is driven by life events (demographics ie: baby boomers and generation X will affect usage.

There are some current media and consumer trends that have positively affected Yellow Pages Usage.

Growing negative consumer perceptions towards intrusive marketing and advertising has resulted in the rise of permission-based marketing. Average consumers in a large city are hit with 2,000 media messages a day and they have started to fight back by embracing technologies that put them in control over when they are marketed to.

DVRs (digital video recorders) now in 10% of North American households are gaining a larger following. One of the key selling features is that you can program them to bleep out commercials.

Do you know that 95% of DVR users use this feature? Consumers are loving IPODs, streaming audio and XM radio which also allows them the option to avoid commercial messages.

And in the newspaper industry there has been a decline in circulation and 30% decline in readership. Yellow Pages on the other hand has seen growth because it is the ultimate permission-based model. Consumers seek it out for information.

Accountability and ROI now rival the traditional criteria of CPM and GRP in determining how advertisers allocate their media budgets. In fact 50% of media buys today are now driven by ROI criteria. Yellow Pages has over 76,000 ads with measurement and can estimate ROI to a business.