Charles Stubbs has left his position as president of Yellowpages.com (a unit of AT&T) to become CEO of Atlanta-based Primedia, which publishes a variety of print and online vertical consumer guides, including Apartment Guide and New Home Guide, ApartmentGuide.com, NewHomeGuide.com and Rentals.com.

He is being replaced by David Krantz, who is currently AT&T’s vice president of business development. Krantz is a five-year AT&T veteran who has focused on developing new consumer-oriented interactive products. Before joining AT&T, Krantz held marketing and strategy positions at GoDigital, AOL and Netscape.

Stubbs’ decision was driven at least in part by a desire to return to his native Atlanta.

His departure follows on the heels of senior Internet management turnover at Idearc Media (Eric Chandler, later replaced by Briggs Ferguson) and RHD interactive, where Jake Winebaum left his role as president of after less than a year on the job.

Earlier this week, my colleague Charles Laughlin posted an entry about the beginning of the YPA annual conference titled “YP Industry Pledges Counteroffensive.” That headline pretty much captures what was an upbeat event that attracted 600 attendees. As YPA President Neg Norton told the industry, “the root of the problem is a belief that we are going away.” The fact is that both the print business and the electronic piece suggest otherwise.

Norton said that industry membership is 462 companies, a new record, with 57 new members in 2007. The YPA, along with the ADP, is working hard on environmental guidelines to educate people that “Yellow is green.” He went on to talk about the 90-day communications plan designed to help people understand the value story and other industry strengths. There are six key elements to this plan, which is still in development.

• Continue to meet with the financial news media
• Approach B and C counties to tell success stories that will bolster local business
• Release the metered ad study that will prove return on investment
• Complete a small-business omnibus survey
• Release the global usage study
• Get the industry’s message across through op-ed columns

Today, the YPA sent out a note inviting people to become friends of the Yellow Pages and receive an RSS feed so that we all have the facts and figures at our fingertips. Norton spoke about Yellow Pages as an industry in transformation where its members had a choice between managing the decline or investing in the future. One example of a company that had done the latter is Australia’s Sensis. In a presentation made by COO Carol Johnson and General Manager Jo Lynne Whiting, along with two of their sales colleagues, they made it clear that the customer is at the top of the pyramid for their $2 billion revenue business, which we calculate makes Sensis the sixth-largest directory company in the world. While the business declined 2.8 percent in ‘07, it is up 4.9 percent in ‘08, and Johnson indicated that she expects better results at year-end.

The Sensis team put together 10 revenue recommendations, which they followed religiously starting with the elimination of all discounts and the need to train, train, train the sales force to tell the value story. Initially, customers didn’t believe that they would not discount and some were angry. But Whiting said that after one year, customer satisfaction and value for the money are both up 12 percent, and employee satisfaction is +8 percent over last year. They praised the work done by Dennis Fromholzer, who they hired as a consultant to help them build information-rich ads that are the No. 1 usage driver.

Two of the most popular panels ran consecutively. Frank Jules, president and CEO of AT&T A&P, gave his first speech at a Yellow Pages event and made it clear that AT&T, like Sensis, is investing resources, distribution and advertising in its largest markets. The company purchased Ingenio, a pay-for-performance corporation, and is offering new products like video ads, Hispanic directories and gatefolds. Video was the highlight of another highly rated panel that followed. Moderated by the CMO of Newsforce, Dana Todd, the focus was on new mobile and video tools and how adoption drives usage and usage in turn drives adoption.

Finally, two significant industry awards were given out. Dorothy Talkington, senior VP of national at Ketchum, received the Stuart Stanze individual contribution award, and Denny Payne, former CEO of AT&T A&P and YPA chairman, received the YPA Lifetime Achievement Award. These two winners were the exclamation points on the Industry Excellence Awards, whose winners can be found on the YPA Web site.

The industry faces greater challenges than ever before, but it is refreshing to hear its leadership admit those and outline a plan that can help get the message out to the various Yellow Pages constituencies that this is still a very strong business. Never before has Yellow Pages faced economic uncertainty, a generational shift, environmental issues and a slow but certain transition from print to digital. We believe the industry is up to the challenge.

The current distribution of the AT&T’s Real Yellow Pages produced by Dex (R.H. Donnelley) will no longer include the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages.

According to the release:

“Local residential listings are already included in the Chicago Neighborhood directories that we deliver in August, on DexKnows.com(TM) and on YELLOWPAGES.COM, so we felt it was better for consumers if we discontinued delivery of a standalone Chicago Metro Residential White Pages directory,” said David Kelly, director of marketing, Dex. “However, people who still wish to receive the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages can contact us and we will happily supply them with a complimentary copy.”

While this strategy has been in practice with Canada’s Yellow Pages Group in select major cities, this is the first such instance where a major U.S. publisher has opted not to deliver a residential White Pages edition while offering consumers and businesses the option of requesting a copy. With a high focus on the environmental impact of directories, this is an interesting move given no formal opt-in movement has been instituted in the Chicago market. It will be interesting to see if this is a leading trend with publishers as a self-imposed means of addressing public concern.

Update: It’s worth clarifying that R.H. Donnelley has not eliminated residential White Pages. It is eliminating (except by request) the stand-alone metro-wide residential White Pages book, while continuing to deliver business and residential listings via community directories. R.H. Donnelley publishes 13 such community books in the Chicago metro area and their combined coverage exactly matches the metro book, according to a company spokesperson. So while this approach seems like an opt-in plan, technically it is not, since an opt-in plan would give consumers the clear choice between receiving or not receiving residential listings.

The small-business advertising arms race has gotten hotter in recent weeks, as companies eye a chance to add Google and Yahoo! search solutions, and other services to small-business marketing budgets once totally contained by Yellow Pages.

First we had ReachLocal’s $305 million valuation based on a $55 million round of financing, sparking the whole marketplace. In early March, Spot Runner entered the game, acquiring Weblistic in an all-stock buy to power its 30 local sales offices with solutions that go beyond its core strength in video. At the same time, Orem, Utah-based Orange Soda got on the map with Freedom Communications, the publisher of The Orange Country Register. Previously, New York-based Yodle got $12 million in funding.

Today, Irvine, California-based WebVisible, a six-year veteran of the reseller space with 60 employees, reinforced its own position with $12 million in new series B funding from Sutter Hill Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, an existing investor. WebVisible partners in the U.S. include AT&T, Earthlink and McClatchy. Internationally, it works with Yellow Pages Group of Canada and British Telecom.

WebVisible CEO Kirsten Mangers says the new money is going to be used to flesh out its offerings and “fully support the customers we have.” The company’s focus is all about “innovation for reaching local businesses. At the end of the day, “it is never a money race.”

A major part of WebVisible’s vision is to provide a 360-degree set of solutions for SMBs. Search solutions are an important part of the equation. But “there comes a time when the sales channel needs more display, more marketing needs. Advertising always follows the audience,” she reminds. “And the paradigm changes over time.” The key is to not tie yourself to a single channel. WebVisible strives to be “Switzerland.”

“Statistics show that conversions will rise with an integrated media campaign,” adds Mangers. “Customers have been asking for it.” Video is not “fully baked,” right now. But it “closes the loop on the brand story,” and is undoubtedly part of a solution that also includes SEO/SEM, banners and location-based services. All of it needs to be “scalable by geography; scalable by vertical.”

With so many players in the market, one would think that the resellers would begin running into each other, much like the third parties in the automotive space that besiege auto dealers, four or five at a time. But Mangers says that almost never happens. “It is a problem I want to have.”

WebVisible’s approach, as a white-label provider of solutions, is to partner with the community players that have brand equity, ranging from Yellow Pages to newspapers to chambers of commerce. “They need to own the relationships,” she says. “It is a more sustainable customer base.”

But the local partners should “put a body in place” dedicated specifically to the extended SMB solutions — not just Yellow Pages or the big-three classified verticals. “They need to go out and tell an excellent story, and show new ways of using online as their lead product.” At the same time, they should “never discount the value of their brand” with bundled discounts, etc.

The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, for instance, has worked with WebVisible to have a dedicated account rep, resulting in a tripling of bookings in the past two months. “Newspaper reps have so many products in their bag that recommendations and fact-finding become difficult,” says Mangers.

Local Insight Regatta Holdings and AT&T announced the acquisition of L.M. Berry’s Independent Line of Business unit. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. According to the press release:

The transaction will combine two industry-leading organizations responsible for selling, producing and distributing nearly 700 print and online directories in North America. In connection with the transaction, Local Insight Regatta Holdings will also become an authorized reseller of advertising for AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.COM Network, a leading Internet Yellow Pages and local search site.

While this sale is not totally unexpected, it does raise some questions about the future of the nearly 100-year-old Dayton-based L.M. Berry and Co. According to Scott Pomeroy, director of Local Insight Regatta: “I am pleased to say that key senior leaders from Berry have agreed to be part of the new company’s senior leadership. Dan Graham, current president and CEO of The Berry Co., has agreed to serve as executive vice president and chief administrative officer of the combined company — and in that capacity, will have responsibility for all integration initiatives, information technology and cultural stewardship. Kathy Geiger-Schwab, currently executive vice president for The Berry Co., will serve as chief strategy officer of the combined company, overseeing all strategic elements of the business including strategic and digital initiatives.”

As part of the agreement, AT&T will retain L.M. Berry’s South Central Area line of business, which it manages in AT&T’s five-state region (Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee), and Berry Network Inc., its certified marketing representative unit, which places print and Internet directory advertising for national businesses.

L.M. Berry’s founder, Loren Berry, was the primary founder of the modern Yellow Pages, and his company was instrumental in building many of the current international directory companies through its joint ownership of ITT World Directories (now Truvo). When L.M. Berry was purchased by BellSouth, many of its entrepreneurial desires were placed on hold and this was again the case when it became part of AT&T’s BellSouth acquisition. The freedom from its corporate restrictions and new ties to an aggressive and growing investment group will provide the joint company with many more opportunities for growth in local media.

We will provide additional coverage of this transaction as we complete additional discussions with all the parties involved.

I’m a happy subscriber to AT&T’s U-verse IPTV service, and I noticed in the monthly program guide that AT&T’s Yellowpages.com is now available on Channel 97. So I “rented” it … a process that required a one-time-only download of graphics, etc.

The Yellowpages.com screen appeared after about a minute. It has the logo on top, a list of nine core YP categories on the lefthand side, and a featured advertiser tile and a search box on the right. When I clicked on one of the nine categories — of which eight could be viewed at a time — I could see that each category has a dozen or so of its own listings, with “featured” listings at the top. Featured listings also utilize an additional column with “copy point” info (hours of opening, etc.). If you scroll down further, you can get MapQuest maps of the businesses.

So — how is the service? It is kind of interesting but not so great. The logos and fonts of the featured listings, for instance, don’t seem to have been adjusted for the TV and can be hard to read. Moreover, many of the maps for the featured listings don’t come up. This is probably because they are generally toll-free franchise businesses that don’t have local locations.

Non-featured listings, on the other hand, automatically display the map but have no additional information. Ultimately, however, I feel these listings provide a better experience. The map is big and easy to see. It was good to learn that “J&J Electricians” is just up the hill from me, for instance. (I wish I had known that last week, don’t ask!)

I’ve been excited about the possibilities for Yellowpages.com on TV for a while: on-demand local business videos, testimonial pages, etc., etc. I still am.

But this early version of the service is minimalistic, slow, not always functional and often hard to read. The listings are far from comprehensive, and there is no audio (which would give it more of a TV-like experience). There are also no explanations anywhere on how to use the service.

But you’ve got to start somewhere, right? For me, this is a definite “Beta,” but it is kind of exciting to be in a test area. This could be important.

Longtimers might remember Bell Atlantic’s CD-I service from the mid-1990s. That Compact Disc driven service had mood music, menus, manager greetings and many other features. In retrospect, it seems very advanced.

Today’s big news is Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid for Yahoo!. The $44.6 billion bid represents a 62 percent premium on Yahoo!’s closing stock price yesterday, which was affected by Yahoo!’s depressing earnings announcement, in which Yahoo! said it would lay off 1,000 workers to “re-accelerate” growth.

For 2007, Yahoo! reported a net profit of $660 million, down 12.1 percent as Yahoo! boosted marketing and development spending by 25 percent in an effort to catch up with Google. Yahoo! has a market capitalization of about $25 billion, compared with more than $300 billion for Microsoft.

Already, Yahoo!’s stock price is up 45 percent, which should be some solace for the execs — many departed — holding options, who have been watching their value fall precipitously.

Microsoft’s bid, of course, did not come from out of the blue. Earlier last year, Yahoo! broke off merger talks, so one assumes this new offer won’t be automatically accepted. Our guess is that other bidders will not enter the picture, unless Yahoo! solicits a “white knight.”

One thing we believe is that the “cultural” issues between Yahoo! and Microsoft are not as pronounced as they have been in the past. Yahoo!’s culture has changed enormously in recent years as it has struggled against Google, and it no longer seems to have such strong identity issues.

Going forward, the real question is who’s best positioned to compete with Google. According to comScore, Google’s share of the global Web search business stands at 77 percent, followed by Yahoo! at 16 percent and Microsoft at less than 4 percent.

Another question is who can get by the tough regulators at the EU (we don’t anticipate significant U.S. problems). Our view is that a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger would strengthen the competitive picture against Google, so regulators would ideally welcome it. Indeed, just a few weeks ago we stopped using the politically correct language “and Yahoo!” when talking about local search. Google is that far ahead.

Microsoft’s Aggressive Steps

What’s clear is that Microsoft plans to take the steps necessary to match up with Google. It has been extremely aggressive as of late with both the aQuantive purchase and the $300 million investment in Facebook. From a Microsoft point of view, Yahoo! is clearly its single best growth injection.

The focus here, of course, is on search. But search is just a piece of the puzzle. Yahoo! also brings to the table its instant messaging service, news access with audio and visual feeds, and personalized Web pages. For business, it offers several services aimed at helping companies boost their presence on the Internet. It has stakes in or owns several other companies, including online shopping with alibaba.com, Flickr for photo blogs and Kelkoo, which compares prices.

Generally, it is conceded in the industry that Yahoo! — including Yahoo! Local — has a first rate social platform. Yahoo! also has developed a relationship with hundreds of newspapers for its HotJobs recruitment service that has extended into display advertising and search. The newspaper consortium appears to be doing fairly well with Yahoo!, although it recently opted to go with Zillow for real estate.

A Closer Look at Integration Issues

An integration of Yahoo! and Microsoft assets is so complex and daunting that we believe little would quickly change. Globally, integration will be hampered by the companies’ respective partnerships, which are intertwined and deep.

The complexity of retaining Yahoo! consumer usage is another major concern. We view the integration of the ad platforms to be similarly complex, but perhaps not as daunting. We would note, however, that the merger would benefit from MSN Search’s longtime relationship with Overture, now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing. AQuantive is still separate, so bringing back-office operations together will be less sticky and tricky.

The integration of Hotmail with Yahoo! Mail is a bigger problem. We wouldn’t anticipate any near-term effort to integrate those two properties. Another area of overlap is in mapping. Yahoo! Maps has significantly greatly market share, but Microsoft has been pumping even more money into its Virtual Earth service and would likely become the merged company’s new standard. Another area of overlap is in mobile, where Yahoo! Mobile services have done well, but would run into Microsoft’s forced synergies on the WINce operating system.

(This post was coauthored by Matt Booth and Peter Krasilovsky.)

In a significant development, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com is replacing Yahoo! Local Search for AT&T’s broadband and Internet customers. It is a move that will greatly enhance Yellowpages.com’s position in the space. The company recently told analysts it expects to attract 2 billion searches in 2008 and 3 billion by 2010.

The move is part of a broad multi-year reworking of AT&T’s existing deal with Yahoo! that gives Yahoo! $300 million to $400 million in upfront cash, according to analysts interviewed by paidContent.

It replaces a previous deal that was primarily based on providing Yahoo! with a share of every AT&T broadband user for a co-branded AT&T/Yahoo! portal and sell through of premium services – an arrangement that AT&T has publicly chafed at.

According to published reports, the previous deal brought Yahoo! roughly $300 million in high margin cash flow. A complete collapse of the deal was unlikely, but the renegotiated terms reflect AT&T’s strong position in the company’s many markets like wireless, directories, and increasingly, the Internet.

AT&T is clearly focused on building up its own portal efforts. The new deal will have a portal “powered by Yahoo!.” With the Yahoo! deal completed, it is adding access to its portal and e-mail for all AT&T customers, not just AT&T Internet customers.

The news comes at an interesting time. Last week, the wireless spectrum bids were due and AT&T will clearly be a contender. Further, Google is rumored to benefit substantially from increased mobile traffic from the iPhone available exclusive through AT&T Wireless.

It is unclear if the deal essentially cuts Yahoo! out of being a local search destination site for AT&T customers. In an environment where top portal and search brands are recipients of mobile usage, that seems unlikely. Regardless, it gives Yahoo! more opportunity to sell display and search advertising throughout the AT&T network. It is something that could have strong dividends as Yahoo! battles directly with Google and others. No doubt, retaining tight control of the carrier deck will allow AT&T to steer traffic accordingly.

It is of no small coincidence that last month, AT&T reworked corporate branding to reflect the company’s intended direction. What was once “AT&T Advertising & Publishing” is now being touted at “AT&T Advertising & Search.” The merger between Yellowpages.com and Ingenio, a $250 million transaction, confirms our belief that AT&T is moving the company toward a fully integrated cross-channel marketing company.

It also extends the reach of the Yahoo! portal to the old BellSouth territories recently integrated into AT&T, and extends Yahoo!’s content beyond the desktop to mobile as well – something that will be much more important over time.

According to paidContent, Yahoo! may see declines over $150 million to $200 million in revenue due to the deal’s restructuring. But there clearly is also plenty of upside if Yahoo!’s advertising is widely used, and mobile develops as strongly as anticipated.

We have speculated for some time that AT&T is a natural fit for Yahoo! in terms of an eventual merger or sale. While this news doesn’t sway us one way or another, we do believe these two companies are moving closer together and an eventual marriage of some type is more than a remote possibility.

(This post was co-written by Matthew Booth and Peter Krasilovsky.)

AT&T Yellow Pages announced a new research strategy yesterday that includes a phase-out of its participation in the current industry syndicated usage program, though the publisher will continue to follow a syndicated methodology and make results available.

AT&T will continue participating in the current syndicated usage program operated by Knowledge Networks/SRI in 2008 (which AT&T described as a “transition year”), measuring 30 markets, compared with 58 measured in 2007. AT&T will simultaneously begin its measurement through M/A/R/C this year.

According to the release, AT&T is working with M/A/R/C Research to develop a new research package that will measure 275 directory areas (comprising about 75 percent of revenue) with three research elements, call tracking, proprietary usage research (print and IYP) and a syndicated component. By “syndicated,” AT&T means, “markets will be pre-announced and have same-day release from M/A/R/C Research.”

This decision is clearly not very good news for Knowledge Networks, which also recently lost the Internet component of the Industry Usage Study, conducted on behalf of the Yellow Pages Association.

One interesting element of the new approach is the emphasis on call tracking. AT&T’s recent acquisition of Ingenio underscores the importance AT&T believes call measurement will have going forward. In addition, call measurement data gets to the heart of the value of Yellow Pages, so elevating its importance in the research package would appear to make sense.

AT&T says results from the M/A/R/C studies will be available beginning in 2009.

This morning, I ran across this video on Yahoo! video, submitted by the Bakersfield Californian, which shows thousands of AT&T Yellow Pages books set up like dominoes then tipped off for an underwhelmed audience.

I’m not sure exactly what the point of this was; there are AT&T spokespeople interviewed in the video, suggesting some sort of PR stunt. There are also recycling banners seen in the background, and some mentions of promoting recycling. But then again, it is stated that these are brand new books “right off the line”; and I don’t see the connection between dominoes and recycling.

But the point is, for me there was something symbolic — in light of falling usage — about watching thousands of print books literally collapse on top of each other. There was more symbolism in the fact that a group of teens (Jr. high students) performed the stunt, given that this is an age group driving the use of competitive local media that has had a domino effect on print usage and ad revenue growth.

Add the fact that the whole thing is being shown to us through online video — the newest killer app of an overall internet medium that has been the primary cause of print usage declines (and does the bluegrass music parody the subject as a relic of the past?). But maybe I’m reading too much into it. If nothing else, it’s a somewhat entertaining video clip for a Friday.