Dinosaurs of Advertising
by Tim Manni
Today’s high-tech world has shifted the way people search for services. Today’s harsh economic conditions have limited the advertising funds business owners can afford to spend. The result: the likely extinction of the once golden, or should I say yellow, ticket to more business, the Yellow Pages. Once upon a time the Yellow Pages were all consumers had to find a landscaper, a new pizza place, or the number to the local hairdresser. Today there’s the internet. Yet, even online Yellow Pages are seeing their traffic diminish:
Print and online ad spending on yellow pages will plummet 6.3% next year, more than double the rate of decline expected for broadcast TV, according to forecasts by Wachovia analyst John Janedis. Within the next four years, ad spending will fall 39% in print directories alone — the steepest projected decline across all local-media categories, according to media-research firm Borrell Associates.
Yellow-pages ads are the only form of advertising many small businesses buy, and the online ads are typically sold in conjunction with print listings, Mr. Simonton says. That means that if businesses aren’t buying the print ad, then the online ad disappears too.
Unfortunately print media has suffered across the board. Print newspapers have suffered especially from a lack of advertising and the abundant access consumers have to online news outlets — a trend that has forced newspaper executives to slash jobs, trim the paper, and just may lead to their overall extinction.
