Internet Advertising comparison

I recently came across this article Advertising follows eyeballs to the Internet
Aug 6 2008 from The Canadian Press, Which states that advertising follows eyeballs, and they've been moving to the Internet.

The reach of online advertising is growing as consumers, especially younger ones, move online for content and consumption. Yes, only the older folks are staying on the printed version. One is because its a habit. The younger ones do not have a reference point and that's why they are moving to the Internet.

But how to gauge the success of online ads?

It's not just about measuring mouse clicks that result in purchases via the Internet, said Andrew Lipsman of U.S.-based ComScore, which studies ways the Internet is used.

The bigger impact is building a product's brand online and affecting consumers' behaviour offline, he said from Chicago.

The average number of online ads viewed by an Internet user in the United States is 1,762 a month, Lipsman said. This number doesn't include any online ads seen on mobile phones. No Canadian statistics were available from ComScore.

"People are beginning to understand how these online ad exposures do have a brand-building impact. And as they begin to see the value in that and get out of the mindset it's all about direct response and purchasing something online right now, more dollars will begin to shift online."

Yahoo, AOL and MSN and social networking site MySpace are market leaders in serving up display ads, Lipsman said.

Google's share of this market is smaller, he said.

But Google has "a much larger share of the paid search (ad) market" - these are ads that appear along with websites on a page of search results.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada says online advertising revenues climbed to just more than $1.2 billion in 2007.

As for consumers' privacy concerns, Gignac said: "If we make those eyeballs less trusting, they won't come to your site and then they can't be reached by advertisers."

Gignac's organization is predicting online revenue will increase to $1.5 billion this year.

Marc Tellier, president and CEO of Yellow Pages Group, said yellowpages.ca has been online for 10 years and reaches 41 per cent of all Canadian web users in a given month, or about 9.7 million people monthly.

"That positions us as the eighth most-visited (online) destination in Canada," Tellier said. "We're looking at $214 million in Internet revenue annualized. By 2010, online should reach about 20 per cent of our revenues. It's a growing category."

In Singapore, Internet is fast gaining ground also amongst the young. The yellow pages print reported flat revenue and thereby Internet is the growth oppotunity to bring the Singapore Yellow Pages revenue up to where it was before.

Yellow Pages on mobile and more

Just checking the Yellow Pages market in Asia with my friends did not produce any positive news. The print media is declining and the Yellow Pages publishers must find new ways to leverage its brand name to enter into other platforms such as Internet and mobile etc to offset its print revenue decline.

From my observation the new media players coming from all different places as the advertising market is converging. Anyone can become a media owner. Thus, for the media player like Yellow Pages, being the solidly print media centric should find a way to co-compete with the other players in order to leverage its brand name and find suitable ways to get new income streams.... Digital media ARPA isn't going to be big... and therefore a new form of revenue stream should be found. Advertisers led where users don't pay... anyway, the sums is not a lot as yet.. but the publishers should not wait too long.

In Singapore, there is already so many happenings around... Telcos may also make enter into the fray especially this is an open market... all revenue is not dirty.
Okay, now let me take you to the US... and what's happening in the market there as reported by SEARCH LAND, there is a big wave going to mobile the next happening....

Local Mobile Search Takes Center Stage As Next-Generation Format Of Yellow Pages: Industry Panel Weighs In The importance of valuable mobile content and services is undeniable—just observe the sea of people talking, text messaging, and searching on mobile devices in nearly every personal and business setting these days. What remains to be seen, however, is which local mobile services and companies will rise to the top with the most relevant offerings that become the “must have” features, and which local mobile companies will fully harness the power of advertising in this medium.


Giving users yet another way to utilize the Yellow Pages with local mobile search is the next-generation format of the medium, as it continues to deliver local content to users’ fingertips when they are ready to find specific business information and make a purchase. The customers ultimately choose the format, and with an estimated 37 million Americans conducting mobile searches on a weekly basis (according to a recent Techmeme Leaderboard Source.. you can read more from this link at yellow pages association (http://www.ypassociation.org)

May of Good Cheers

The Fingers are walking on the Web

This is as reported in Canada by: reportonbusiness.com

I love the Yellow Pages business after spending most of my life working there. The Yellow Pages provided work for me for the past 25 years. Now its going to change and change it should to survive.. the users in Singapore are younger and more internet savvy. Web is the platform of delivery for tomorrow. And with mobile this will be even more challenging as this article from Canada suggests. Local matters is a company which provides conversion of print into internet version etc.


FINGERS WALKING ON THE WEB

There are lots of reason to love the Yellow Pages. It's a great media franchise that pumps out cash.

There's one reason to worry about phone directories maintaining their incredible track record - the domestic Yellow Pages Income Fund boasts 21-per-cent annual growth in distributable cash over the past five years - and it's that folks may let their fingers do the walking through the Internet, and somehow bypass the phone books.

Which bring us to Local Matters Inc., a software company that plans to break a prolonged dry spell in TSX technology initial public offerings.

Local Matters filed the paperwork last week for a $30-million to $40-million IPO that's led by Canaccord Capital and CIBC World Markets. The company builds the programs that run local content searches for 22 different phone directory publishers in 14 countries.

As Yellow Pages builds its online presence, our fingers will do the clicking with help from Local Matters.

The management team at this seven-year-old company includes CEO Perry Evans, who founded MapQuest and worked at R.R. Donnelley & Sons, and a number of other Internet entrepreneurs. The company is out raising money to pay down debt, rather than allow the founders to cash out.

Like most early stage tech companies, Local Matters is losing money, spilling $6.1-million of red ink in 2007 after a $16.3-million loss the previous year. So there's no earnings-per-share multiple that can be used to value this company.

But there are valuation metrics such as enterprise value to revenue - standard yardsticks back in the tech boom. Local Matters plans to sell shares for between $5.40 and $6.60 each, which will value the company at between 3.3 and 3.9 times this year's revenues.

TSX-listed software companies change hands with an enterprise value that averages 5.1 times revenues, while North American online publishers command a multiple of four times revenues. The plan is to price this IPO by June 23.