The Death of the Yellow Pages
By Bernie on 24 Feb 2007:
The Print Yellow Pages is a $15 billion industry, so why are there dozens of Yellow Pages in my lobby still wrapped in plastic waiting to be picked by the tenants of the building?
In 1994 my company was in the business of designing interactive telephone systems for large corporate customers like American Express and United Airlines. If you saw an ad in Parade Magazine for Holiday Inn and wanted more information on their property in, say, Buena Vista, Florida you would call a toll free number and press digits in response to different prompts. It was like the Internet, but over the phone. 1994 was also the year that Netscape came out; and in less than two years we lost all our customers to the new way of getting information to consumers.
We had all these phone lines and servers and racks of equipment and needed to find a new use for them. So we went into the phone card business which was just starting in America back then. Skip ten years ... now my company is one of the largest prepaid card companies in North America. The Internet killed my original business but opened the door to another.
Years ago, whenever the Yellow Pages were delivered to our building they would disappear the first day. In fact we would call and order Yellow Pages for the surrounding areas as well, Brooklyn, Queens, Northern New Jersey and so on. Today, months after they were dropped off in the lobbies of almost every building in New York, you will see this sight of unclaimed, unwanted, unopened Yellow Pages.
If I search for "40 inch lcd" in Google, not one Yellow Pages entry shows up in the top hundred entries; they're not even in the sponsored links. The big claim to fame for the Yellow Pages has always been sales. If you listed your business you always got sales. Now they're letting those sales go to Amazon, Newegg, Nextag and others. So why would anyone who has Internet access want a printed copy of old technology?
Of course, I may be persuaded to take a copy if they were delivered by the Peruvian Yellow Pages Girls.
Given that the Print Yellow Pages will eventually die, the Internet YP will need to start giving a better user experience before they too slowly wither away. At the present time Internet YP users are more likely to visit financial, B2B, media, and manufacturer sites, while local search engines skew toward community, gaming, entertainment, and politics [ClickZ]. So IYP still has some life to it, but just as Amazon doesn't just sell books, eventually IYP will see others nipping at their current business strongholds.
There are some local businesses that have not gone digital and for whom the Print Yellow Pages still deliver sales results as fewer and fewer competitors advertise there, but if more and more of these books keep piling up in lobbies how long can that last?
Ah, but one time it was the best game in town. Let me tell you a story. Back in 1971 my brother and I were in the vending machine business, our company was called Intervend. We had over 500 machines in five counties in New Jersey with five trucks all hooked up by radio communications. Boy we could have used cellphones then. We sold everything: sandwiches, soda, cigarettes (45 cents a pack, and when we went to 50 cents everyone swore they would quit), candy, ice cream, coffee, ice cubes, popcorn, you name it. We even had jukeboxes and pool tables. We were in bars, hospitals, factories, diners, and gas stations.
One day the phone rings and the caller said he wanted to order a few cartons of Marlboros, some Kents, Winstons, 5 boxes of Hershey's Almonds, and so on. I told him we only sold individual products through vending machines and that he must have the wrong number. Twenty minutes later another caller, another order for products. An hour after that another call.
I quickly went to the Yellow Pages under Wholesale Candy and Tobacco and found our phone number listed accidentally under the largest wholesaler in Bayonne. The Yellow Pages goofed! I told my brother we just won the jackpot. Here was a full page listing in the Yellow Pages with our phone number and which by some miracle covered exactly the same products we were already selling but only on the wholesale level. The next day I went to the Hudson County Courthouse and registered Bayco Distributors, Wholesale Candy and Tobacco. I had receipt books printed up and within three days we were in another business.
Although the cigarettes and soda cans were exactly the same kind as we used in the vending business, candy was another story. The manufacturers made vending machine candy bars a different size to fit our vending slots and also because we had to price everything without pennies. We answered the phone "Bayco Distributors" and took orders. If someone asked, "Is this X Wholesale Products?" we would say no and give them the correct number to call. It seems that even their long time customers would forget their number and simply look it up in the Yellow Pages. We wound up doing about a quarter of a million dollars annually of wholesale business for a number of years until we got into another business.
I must say, I am not the same person as when I was younger and were I to receive the same calls today I would not unfairly take advantage as I did then. Some people change.
Yellow Pages Related/Trivia:
[Quartz Mountain] The Yellow Pages aren't dead yet, Excerpt: There are, of course, still a great many people who use the internet only occasionally or not at all. Robert Scoble thinks this will only be an issue for another 20 years, and he may be right, but I know an awful lot of people in their 20's and 30's who rarely even check their email, much less use the internet to find local businesses. Many of these folks will eventually come online, but I suspect it will take more than 20 years for the number of infrequent internet users to shrink so small that they can be disregarded completely.
In Israel, it's called the Golden Pages and if you search for "PEACE" you will only get back "PEACE" is not in their database. Sad.
God's Yellow Pages, Let your fingers do the walking thru the Bible
[Journal of the American Chiropractic Association]: Attorneys spend more on the Yellow Pages than any other group, yet more of their income is earned from other sources, such as referrals.
[Click on image(s) for larger view]
For more of my articles like this see Technology
Comments from Old Comment System
- Bernie, Sorry to inform you, but advertising at the Real Yellow Pages (owned by Bellsouth) is more profitable than ever. Businesses ARE advertising more than ever before...
- Yellow Pages hardcopy or electronic copy...it really doesn't matter. I can't speak for the yellow pages in other parts of the United States but the ones created for my area of Tallahassee, Florida haven't a clue as to how to effectively index items. The lack of cross references, proper organization and completeness in regards to topic makes it quite difficult to find business listings in many cases. I was an editor specializing in indexes for 10 years at a local publishing firm so I know of what I speak. Let me illustrate with a clear example. Let's take the subject of "alarms." There are many types of alarm companies around dealing with car alarms, burglar alarms, fire alarms, security alarms, home alarms, business alarms, etc. Now rather than keep all of the businesses listed under alarms possibly using the specific types listed above as sub-categories, the yabos decide to put a few under each category and under the title "alarms" reference all the other titles. The PROPER way of doing it is to have, for example, "CAR ALARMS -- See: ALARMS" and then under "ALARMS" have a subcategory "Car Alarms" with the business listings for all the businesses dealing with "car alarms." And that's just a simple example of how the local yellow pages have it wrong. Even under their existing alarm titles the listings are incomplete. The alarm company I use isn't even listed although they have multiple offices in this area. Many other companies in the area don't have listings but should have. It's the fault of the publishing firm that was hired to do the job.
- I prefaced my post by stating that it is still a 15 billion dollar business. I even quoted the Quartz Mountain excerpt that denied the business was dead. I have no doubt that there are millions of businesses that have no clue how to use the Internet and so are continuing to advertise in the Yellow Pages. In my own business we have never spent one penny in all these years on Yellow Page advertising yet we do business in the 9 figures. We have learned how to make money advertising elsewhere. Eventually all businesses will learn what we know. The title of my article was not "The Yellow Pages are Dead" and I did not say it was over with already. However, it is doomed and will die, just as 45 rpm records died, 8 track tapes died, the Walkman died, the VCR business died, the original AT&T died. I attended hundreds of US Customs Auctions when they were held in the WTC, but I stopped when too many people were bidding more than the wholesale cost of items. There are idiots who pay more than they should and they keep a lot of businesses going that should have died an early death. I used to buy the TV Guide when I first got married and at that time it was one of the most valuable print magazine assets in the world. When was the last time you bought a TV Guide? The Yellow Pages will continue to make money even when none of the advertisers get any sales back in return. Why? Inertia. There are still people out there who like rotary phones. When they die, we can finally put that relic to bed. I have no doubt that advertising in local Yellow Pages can make some money for businesses that do not know any better. But as they close down, the young turks taking over and opening new businesses will not be looking at publications that no one picks up or uses.
- Interestin post Bernie...I know the older folk for sure don't access the internet and guess what sometimes I use the ole Yeller pages too..lol..but shhhhhhh..Heh. ty for the link and ..Happy Sunday!..:)
- Another great post that would not be complete without a pic of a babe in it!!! LOL! Gotta love your style Bernie. As for the yellow pages--they have their purpose and place--as for me--I am lazy---I use SuperPages.com on the Internet. Have a great Sunday!
- I too use the superpages when I need an address or phone number. A few weeks ago I needed to visit a coin dealer in New Jersey so I looked him up to get a map. I know I can ask for directions, but there's nothing better than a graphic. Now both of my sons, aged 24 and 30, have GPS in their cars. My younger saw the printout on my desk and asks me when am I going to enter the 21st century reminding me what happened to James Kim. Well, I'm looking at some GPS systems now (my car is a 1989 Honda Civic with over 176,000 miles). I'm always the last one in the family to get something. My granddaughter shamed me into getting a Tivo. She's seven and has a computer, cellphone (restricted to calling set numbers), her own Tivo, etc.
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