Two weeks ago, eMarketer a great online source for market research and trend analysis on online marketing, media and emerging technologies published a report that covered the issues surrounding internet yellow pages and search engines.

According to one of their senior analysts, David Hallerman, when people use the Web to look for local retailers and service providers, they tend not to research by business categories as the print yellow pages are organized. Instead, they go to search engines, which rely on keywords and are far less structured than a yellow pages index.”

Local paid search spending will likely reach at least $4 billion in 2011, the article stated, and at that point, the distinctions between IYPs and search engines will become increasingly irrelevant as advertisers buy space on both types of sites with a single purchase.

Other studies, however, downplay the tendency away from yellow pages and toward search engines.

According to a recent JupiterResearch report, “Local Advertising: Blending Categories to Compete Effectively,” 59% of US local advertisers buy ads in print yellow pages and 45% go the IYPs, but only 26% engage in search marketing.

“Local marketers are not yet completely convinced about local search, one of their analysts said. The article notes how “in part, this is because local advertisers are used to yellow pages advertising, which requires little work on their part.”

“That the target audience for local yellow pages advertising does more of its searching online is clearly a force pushing local businesses to advertise online, whether it be with the yellow pages, search, local directories or newspapers,” Hallerman added.

In an age when search particularly local search is increasingly becoming the preferred solution by which consumers can find a specific product or service, it’s good to know that the Internet Yellow Pages still hold the advantage.

It may be hard to imagine how even the strongest and most established IYP brands can compete, given the so-called search onslaught. But in a recent blog entry, John Kelsey of The Kelsey Group explained why he believes IYPs will develop faster than local search in the next couple of years.

Kelsey mentioned four key reasons why print publishers have the edge with their IYPs:

1. They already possess an outstanding sales force

Sales representatives will receive an increasing amount of training that will give them the confidence to sell IYP. Further, newer sales reps will naturally be better at selling electronic. In the meantime, Google’s plan to create its own sales force does not strike me as being economically viable for anyone involved.

2. They continually improve their IYP offerings

Yellowbook.com’s humorous advertisements did a good job of educating consumers about going online to find basic category information.

3. They offer both White and Yellow Pages

IYP offers both White and Yellow Pages, and this is a service that customers can’t get as easily through the search engines. Importantly, publishers need to do a better job of telling consumers that their people pages are the best in the business.

4. They enhance their IYP products so people can search either through the traditional Yellow Pages classifications or using a more local search-like approach.

IYP is too important to print publishers for them not to make a significant commitment to its success. They have the money to do the research to learn what customers like and need, and they are going to provide products that are valuable.

5. Their tremendous opportunity for growth in the mobile devices

The Kelsey Group believes one of the most significant opportunities online is for IYP companies to work with mobile devices. This will succeed if publishers are able to get their logo and IYP service on future 3G and 4G cellphones.

It’s interesting to know that, despite all the attention online advertising is receiving these days, outdoor advertising billboards, park bench ads, and others is soaring.

The latest figures are tough to beat. According industry trade groups, revenues in outdoor advertising rose about 8% to almost $3.8 billion in the U.S. during the first half of 2007. That puts it on pace to match the increases seen in 2005 and 2006,  according to Reuters.

The MediaFile blog of Reuters also published a breakdown of the top categories from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America:

1. Misc. Services and Amusements: $581 million
2. Insurance and Real Estate: $382 million
3. Public Transportation, Hotels and Resorts: $326 million
4. Communications: $311 million
5. Media and Advertising: $307 million
6. Retail: $296 million
7. Restaurants: $232 million
8. Financial: $217 million
9. Automotive Dealers and Services: $199 million
10. Automotive Equipment: $180 million

User-controlled video ad formats are on the rise. After months of testing various video advertising models, YouTube the world’s largest video website recently announced a new type of video ad format which it calls inline ads.

According to an article in the New York Times, the new ad format is unobtrusive and [keep] users in control of what they [see]. They involve translucent windows that are overlaid on video content for roughly 10 seconds near the beginning of a given clip, very similar to the tickers that display headlines during TV news programs.

Users can choose to ignore the overlay (which disappears after about 10 seconds) or close it. But if clicked, the video will stop and the video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.

For the moment, YouTube will only place the ads on video clips of its content partners the more than 1,000 small and large media companies that have licensed their videos to YouTube, the article stated. By doing so, YouTube will avoid the potential liability of having ads appear on copyrighted clips it is not authorized to display. The revenue from the ads will be split between the media partner and YouTube.

If YouTube is successful, analysts say, these inline video ads could persuade more media companies to license their content to them as a way to make money from it.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, YouTube now attracts an audience that is larger than the combined audiences of its three nearest competitors, MySpace, AOL and Yahoo. Its adoption of overlay ads for online video could turn the format into an industry standard.

The video ad market, which is expected to nearly double from last year to $775 million, has been projected to grow to $4.3 billion by 2011, according to research firm eMarketer.

In tests, YouTube users had clicked on overlays 5 to 10 times more frequently than on banner ads that already appear on some YouTube pages, the article also noted. Yahoo has also been testing overlay video ads, creating more momentum for the new ad format.

According to a recent article by Michael Taylor (When Will Yellow Pages Come to the Social?) in the Kelsey Group blog, Yellow Pages publishers could be the drivers of creating Social Local Media (or SoLo, as they coined it).

Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), such yellowpages.ca, could be the drivers of localized social media verticals on lifestyle or life events where open discussion and commerce coexist.

Imagine the targeting opportunities for local advertisers as well as the creation of forums where advertisers could open up conversations on their brands, learn about local desires and uncover marketing nuances by having this local forum at their disposal, Taylor wrote. Local consumers would become more engaged and return more often to these SoLo sites on IYPs since most social media sites tend to be very local and community focused rather than far-flung global sites. Who better to own this space than the perennial local media outlet with the deepest local content  Yellow Pages?

Taylor also stressed that harnessing the potential for both local consumers and advertisers will be both the challenge and the opportunity. The opportunity exists for IYPs to be one of the first to step on the SoLo arena, but they can’t wait long otherwise niche verticals and other local media outlets will take away the advantages to be gained as a first mover.

Yellow Page publishers have already adopted consumer reviews. But the most interesting development involves YellowPages.ca, Canada’s largest online directory, which recently launched their integration of Facebook for customers who want to save and share their favorite businesses by using their link function on Facebook.com. They’ve also added social bookmarks sites such as del.icio.us, Furl, Yahoo MyWeb, and Google Bookmarks.

With the wealth of local content, IYPs could take a local leadership position in key areas such as local services/contractors, home improvement, home decorating, financial, health care, entertainment, weddings and other lifestyle oriented topics that would be attractive to social media users.

Sebastian Provencher of the Praized Blog (www.praized.com) also believes SoLo is promising. I’m starting to think social search has a great future but I also think it’s difficult to start from scratch, he wrote. I also think there might be an amazing opportunity out there for directory publishers (and anyone operating a local search site with a good amount of traffic) to launch a social search application to complement their current database of content.