Over 500 industry representatives gathered this September in Reston, Virginia to hear the latest research and participate in discussions on current industry issues and trends. The DDC 2007 State of the Industry conference was opened by John Kelsey who provided a market overview of the Global Yellow Pages industry. He indicated that while the print copy has seen some decline in frequency of use (particularly in major markets) the online yellow pages has dramatically increased in use. The Yellow Pages publishers are taking on the challenge of search engines and stepping up to the plate by adapting and embracing the new delivery technologies to bring buyers and sellers together. Bringing buyers and sellers together has been their expertise for over a hundred years. The directory industry in the US is very competitive with 4 or 5 directories per market. The print yellow pages still represents 90% of the revenue while globally print represents 88%. Usage of the hard copy is still greater than the Internet Yellow Pages and Local Search combined.

Charles McLaughlin from the Kelsey Group provided his vision of the directory industry in 2020. He suggested that we will live in an online world where media surrounds us. It will be a specialized vertical media marketplace with less hard copy directories and where pricing is largely multi-channel, value-based, and supported by call measurement.

Sometime was spent sharing the latest April 2007 Global usage research. France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK all participated in the study and the data was averaged for presentation. Basically the research indicated that while there appears to be some shift in usage between the print, online and search engines the hard copy is still the number #1 referenced vehicle with no tipping point yet in sight.

Scott Pomeroy of Local Insight Media focused his key note address on the consumer of today. They have the world at their fingertips. They are driven, empowered and in control. UTube sees some 65,000 uploaded videos a day and a quarter of the websites online incorporate opinions, feedback and reviews. This new consumer is using text messaging because they want instant communication as email is too slow. They are not passive, but highly mobile and need targeted and customized messages.

Warren Kay, Managing Director, Strategic Alliances, Yahoo! Search Marketing was the other key note address at the conference. He shared some interesting facts pertaining to market shifts. Online ad spending in 2011 will be 7.8 billion up from 2.1 billion in 2006. Internet usage is interesting though because of the 89% of people who regularly or occasionally research online only 7% buy online. Purchase behavior used to be influenced by newspaper, TV reminder, phonebook, and friend and now it’s the internet for awareness, price comparison, product reviews, and recommendations. People still purchase offline.

There were numerous breakout sessions on topics including; the feasibility of the pay-per-call in Yellow Pages, Winning Back City Users, Selling Search, SEO and Performance-Based Advertising, Video and Voice integration, and discussions on tomorrows sales channels. We will cover some of these areas later in this Blog.

My overall take home from this conference is that while the Yellow Pages Industry is at a cross-road and feeling some competition for the first time, the slight decline in hard copy usage is not a market trend but rather an indicator to the Yellow Pages publishers that the brand needs to be energized and made relevant to the new consumer. I found it very interesting that even the internet search gurus in the midst agreed that there are a higher level of leads delivered to an advertiser through the Yellow Pages and Internet Yellow Pages than through local search.