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.