News from European Yellow Pages Publishers

There is this site that I normally get my dose of information regarding what's happening in the Yellow Pages and Directory Publishing arena.
Their focus is a little wider as their members are not just Yellow Pages publishers but all kinds plus the New Media, hence its quite interesting to catch up some of the news coming from here. Anyway, I also represent the 3L systems in this part of the world. So, I need to catch up with the news from there. 3L systems is used widely by mid sized publishing companies such as Eniro.

Here is a lead from them about social network advertising - Are MySpace users getting immune to ads?

Fri, 08/02/2008 - 10:29. Sector news

Business Week writes that while News Corp., owner of MySpace is thrilled about its social network's ad-revenue growth, Google and advertisers say marketing messages aren't getting through. One company, advertising on MySpace said that ads on MySpace had lost a lot of their force, measured by the number of times users clicked on them. The ads' click-through rate plummeted from one in 100—a decent return by Web standards—in 2006 to one in 1,000 in 2007. "Users became more or less desensitized to the advertising," said the advertiser. But News Corp. still wins.

Sales for Fox Interactive Media (FIM), the division that includes MySpace, surged 87% in the last three months of 2007 from a year earlier, primarly due to revenue growth for search and advertising at MySpace. Of the total revenue generated by FIM, $62 million, or 26%, comes from a deal with Google that gives Google the exclusive right to place search ads on MySpace pages. Google acts as a middleman between marketers who want to reach social-network users and the networks where those ads are placed. But Google pays News Corp. for that right even when the ads don't generate much, if any, revenue. Google is not amused. (Source: BusinessWeek.com)

What do you think about the social networking with advertising... it looks like consumers are being followed everywhere.. even to their toilets!!!

Yahoo's Revamped AT and T Deal Aligns with Display Ad Network Goal

It looks like the Google and Yahoo! game on having affairs with the Telephone companies not only are in the areas of Yellow Pages, but also on the running of their entire off-site display advertising business.. as this article attest.... from Clickz.com

Yahoo's renegotiated deal with ATandT reflects its mission to build its off-site display advertising business. The multi-year renewed agreement essentially makes a once-reliable revenue stream for Yahoo less so, yet it could mean bigger bucks in the long run for the company, which is under pressure from investors. According to an original contract signed in 2001, Yahoo powered ATandT's broadband ISP portal, and received payment for each broadband subscriber.

There should be many more of such contracts to fend off the marriage with MSN... Well, if Yahoo! and MSN are one they will still be far away from Google's dominance on the search advertising at 77% market shares.