JaySmall.com/old

Consultant Greg Sterling's new blog has quickly grown to a must-read for anyone following local search, directory and content businesses. He sums up Verizon's planned sale of its interactive Yellow Pages business with an astute analysis:

"The company has reconceived its role, vis-a-vis local businesses, from a 'yellow pages publisher' to a local marketing agency, which sells print and online yellow pages in addition to other products (including SEM). Long term this is a very smart idea on several levels. Local businesses want and need a single point of contact to online marketing [emphasis added] and the combined online-offline offering is quite powerful."

Sounds a bit like a call to arms I put forth for newspapers not long ago.

The space for ad messages online is cheap. Content adjacencies for ads online seem to add very little value compared to offline media. The distribution of ad messages online is cheap and getting cheaper. It's hard to make money if that's all you sell. Unfortunately, newspaper ad staffs are accustomed to selling space, adjacency and distribution. We must get past that.

Effective creation and cross-media optimization of commercial messages need not fall below sustaining price points, if their results are positive and can be proven to clients. Newspapers either exited, marginalized or simply never engaged in those activities in the offline world. Now we must learn to do them well, and fast, to retain existing local advertiser relationships and have hope of growing new ones.