A new Borrell Associates report, Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages , forecasts explosive local online advertising growth over the next 5 years. The report is $995 but the summary is free. Their forecast premise is print Yellow Page advertising will go the way of classified ads and move online. Key quote on this movement:
"Over the next 5 years, we are predicting that 39 percent of the ad revenue spent on print yellow pages revenues will vanish as small businesses shift marketing budgets online."
Helping drive this shift is an army of sales people focused on selling online media. According to Borrell, over 34,000 media sales reps are pushing local online advertising. Most all of these folks are retrained and refocused legacy media reps working for newspapers, Yellow Page companies and other local media companies. All of this effort is resulting in the rapid growth of local online advertising, which Borrell says will grow 61% this year to $14.1 billion.
Borrell also reports that local online video is the fastest growing piece of local online advertising and that by 2012 it will surpass all other formats, including paid search. We've posted on this trend in the past and we continue to be amazed at the rapid growth of online video advertising.
We covered the shift to local online advertising by small businesses last year in our forecast report The Connected World of Entrepreneurs. Borrell's recent report and forecast shows this trend continues to gain momentum.


Last week a yellow pages company dropped off 8 books for us in our new condo building.
We don't have a land line, but we took one anyway. There are 7 left in the lobby. Apparently no one wanted one!
So, I'm guessing the future is here now, at least among young city folk.
Posted by: dennis crow | July 31, 2008 at 12:41 PM
Last week a yellow pages company dropped off 8 books for us in our new condo building.
We don't have a land line, but we took one anyway. There are 7 left in the lobby. Apparently no one wanted one!
So, I'm guessing the future is here now, at least among young city folk.
Posted by: dennis crow | July 31, 2008 at 12:41 PM
As everyone knows by now, video is very exciting. I think in the next few years people will discover that video is appropriate for certain areas of the consumer market, right now it seems like everyone wants to use video for everything. I think the small business arena will benefit the most from video which is pretty much the thesis behind Jippidy.com
Posted by: George | July 31, 2008 at 10:53 PM
The Yellow Pages is like having a ugly piece of yellow furniture in the main room of an expensive house.
It is more of a bother than a help and it's a waste of paper.
http://SuccessCosign.com
Posted by: Success CoSign.com | April 09, 2009 at 07:56 AM
Online video tops all other forms of online advertising in my opinion. Sites like http://www.adwido.com make it easy to reach your target market using video.
Posted by: mlgreen8753 | August 12, 2009 at 07:51 PM