The new phone books are here, the new phone books are here, a phrase burnt into everyone’s memory by Steve Martin in the movie The Jerk.
That’s what came to mind a week ago when I saw a stack of “the real yellow pages” sitting in the mail room of the condo i live in.
Now as you look at the picture keep in mind that my condo is pretty small, by Florida standards, only 76 units.
Right off the bat, you can see there might be a slight oversupply left.
Moreover this follows last month when the Bell South yellowpages, I guess the not real yellow pages were left, of which 43 books still were sitting there last night.
Bottom line.
1. The yellowbook publishers are living more books than residents, and charging advertisers based on distribution.
2. Less than 1/2 of the residents even picked up the first set of books, and so far not one of the new books has been taken in a week.
3. The results should be especially alarming for advertisers as the residents of my condo are all over 50, most are over 60, all wealthy as the least expensive condo in the building is still in the seven figures, big spenders and shoppers and exactly the people you would expect would use the yellow pages, if anyone would.
As newspapers continue to file for bankruptcy around the country and people’s use of yellowpages seems to be almost non-existent, the Internet is surely the culprit.
I love the way traditional media is willing to jump on a click fraud issue, or the way Madison Avenue tried to keep their clients off the net, due to “lack of accountability” while keeping their clients in totally unaccountable traditional media.
Where is the outcry about the juiced up circulation and distribution numbers for the yellow pages?
I can’t recall ever seeing any article talking about how many “extra” copies of yellow pages are left for people, or how many are never even picked up.
If a yellow page publisher says they are distributing a million books and leaves 100,000 extra ones in condos and apartments, isn’t that circulation fraud?
Making the whole situation worse is when you consider most of us are trying to get “greener” it seems like a tremendous waste of natural resources to print way more books than are ever going to be used.
Traditional print media is dying.
All the information contained in print, is available on the internet.
Advertisers need to realize what they are buying and getting for their advertising dollars.
The more they understand, the more there money will wind up on the net.
I called my Yellow Pages, last month when they were delivered, to cancel having them delivered in future years, but they told me they could only take me off the list for two years, and then I would have to opt-out again.
I told them it was a waste of resources and money and I could get what I needed on the Net….but they said, “them’s the rules”.
.
In a related story, the Philadephia Inquirer (a large newspaper) declared bankruptcy this weekend based on accumulated debt of $300 million dollars.
I’ve seen the Yellow Pages books. No need for them. Which is part of the reaon that AT&T (YellowPages.com) purchased YP.com for 3.85 million. It’s get online, or get left behind.
“it seems like a tremendous waste of natural resources to print way more books than are ever going to be used.”
Talk about wasteful.
Here in NYC the Yellow Pages combines both an English and Spanish version.
Everyone gets the Spanish edition even if you can’t read Spanish.
Nobody knows about yellowpages or YP in other parts of the world, so why bother.
am glad my BullS website is kicking the butt of YP …
We still need papers for:
Good for window washing
Swat flies
Bird poop
Fire starter
for puppies to poop on it
and lastly,
time for my honey to whack my butt!!
giddy giddy up boy!
Need newspapers:
“for puppies to poop on it”
LOL
future will probably be if you want a print version you order one…all others will be online
Yp is a good choice if used as mobile device…easy to hit yp send
You are all correct, it’s not a smart move to print books which yielded some 14 billion look-ups last year, right at the point a purchase is being made. I’d much rather do some Goggle search which yields millions of possible sites to look through instead of just flipping open the book and finding that local business I need in a minute or two. And of course, who needs money saving coupons in this economy.
Interesting photo.
Looks like the building manager is going to have to pay to have this trash thrown out.
He should send the bill to the company that produced the litter in the first place.
Screw the yellow pages and the horse they rode in on. I bought a $10k ad from them, biggest in my category in an attempt to be the 1st listing under my category. They filled a whole page that the category starts on with the alphabetical in-column ads and a bunch of ads that say “Advertise with AT&T, call today!!”. You have to turn the page over to find my $10k ad. These other people that came before my display ad paid $30 bucks a pop to get all the calls.
AT&T doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the 1st and 2nd page of search results.
Hopefully the class action suit we are trying to get put together against them will hurt them and make them go away. Anybody know a good consumer class action attorney. I’ve got several looking into the case already but I’m still shopping.
I am still getting customers in one if the small local phone books in N. Texas with good results. The consumer prefers the small local books over the much larger old fashioned directories.