Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has acquired a majority stake in grownups.co.nz,  a Web site targeting the over 50s crowd, as reported on Stuff.co.nz. Voted as New Zealand’s best lifestyle Web site in 2008, this acquisition may well prove to be a smart move for YPG-NZ. According to Blair Glubb, Yellow Pages Group’s digital marketing director, …

 
With the recent acquisition of Get It Pages in Saskatchewan, Yellow Pages Group in Canada has now consolidated a national footprint in Canada. According to the New Brunswick Business Journal, Get It Pages publishes directories in the regions of Battleford, Prince Albert, Yorkton and Estevan. YPG will integrate these editions into its operations, and they …

 
 As an innovative way of promoting its Yellow Pages and Yellow Frontdoor, its magazine-styled directory focused on home improvement and decorating, Yellow Pages Group New Zealand is now the main sponsor of New Zealand’s largest home show as reported by New Zealand’s Thread Magazine. Within the environment of a slowing real estate market and the …

Australia’s Sensis released its results for the financial year ended June 30, and many in the global Yellow Pages industry will be interested to find that print revenues are growing in Australia, bucking a global trend of often steep declines.
We will report more details next week in a write-up of why Sensis is succeeding where others …

On Thursday’s second-quarter and first-half earnings call, Yellow Pages Group CEO Marc Tellier made it abundantly clear that his company’s acquisition of Volt Information Sciences was driven by the need to secure strategic technologies and not to gain a toehold in the U.S. Yellow Pages market.
The fact that the U.S. independent publisher DataNational came with the …

The U.K.-based online directory Brownbook, which recent announced international expansion, sees itself as something of an anti-Yellow Pages. The company operates on a shoestring, with fewer than a dozen employees, while taking a decidedly user-generated approach to building an online local business directory. The company isn’t following a shoestring approach out of necessity as much as …

New CEO Scott Klein presented Idearc Media’s first-half results and previewed his plans for reorganizing and reenergizing the company. The main theme of the presentation was a “Journey of Transformation,” which is truly what Idearc needs based on the results of Klein’s eight-week evaluation of the organization and its second-quarter results released today.
Financially, the …

Yell Group saw an 11.3 percent rise in its share value yesterday (to 79 p) following its first-quarter 2009 earnings (its financial year ends March 31) announcement, in which the publisher topped its U.S. guidance, fell a bit short in the U.K. and held steady guidance for Spain and Latin America. Yell continues to trade slightly …

AT&T Advertising & Publishing saw a 3.3 percent first-half revenue decline, to US$2.82 billion. Part of the decline reflects the sale of the L.M. Berry operation to Local Insight Media, and the resulting lost revenues. That deal closed early in the second quarter. AT&T reported that its Yellowpages.com revenues grew 40.2 percent in the second quarter, …

BT Directories has made a bold move to bolster its position in the U.K. online directory business by acquiring Ufindus from the Scottish online services firm Iomart, the company announced today. One news outlet reported the purchase price at GBP 20 million. Ufindus, a Lancaster-based online business, had 2007 revenues of just GBP 17 million.
BT hopes the company’s portfolio …

Over the past several months, The Kelsey Group has been talking with a number of sales managers and directors of companies in the directory, newspaper and online space to understand the challenges of recruiting, hiring and training online reps. The sense from our interviews is that the market for skilled reps who understand and have …

TKG has learned that local online industry veteran Mark Canon has accepted the position of president-new media at Yell, the U.K.’s leading directory publisher. He will start in July and take over for the retiring Eddie Cheng.
Canon brings a varied background to Yell, having been an Internet Yellow Pages pioneer at Switchboard, with subsequent stints …

Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has announced the debut of “Yellow mobile” on the Telecom and Vodafone Live! networks. 
According to New Zealand’s Business to Business magazine:
“Yellow Pages Group Digital Media Director Blair Glubb said Yellow mobile will complement the company’s existing range of advertising solutions which already cover the print, online and voice (via …

There has not been all that much fresh coverage of the rumor, reported earlier this week, that Microsoft may acquire Yell Group, the U.K.-based international publisher with operations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain and Latin America. We have not been able to pick up much to support the rumor, though circumstances might suggest …

Sensis has announced the offering of online auctions on its Trading Post Web site. According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald: “some two million people already use the www.tradingpost.com.au site to buy and sell goods and services. The company now aims to attract a share of the additional 3.4 million Australians using online auction …

An innovative bar code technology, QR Codes, first developed in Japan by Denso-Wave has been introduced in Singapore by Singapore Press Holdings. Branded as ZapCodes, the two-dimensional bar codes enable mobile phones equipped with cameras and special software to download information or link users to Web sites for more information. According to the Straits Times: 
“ZapCodes …

Denver-based Local Matters announced a major deal with European Directories “whereby Local Matters will develop and enhance the online white and yellow pages websites across European Directories’ 8-country publishing operations,” according to the press release issued today.
European Directories is a London-based, private-equity-owned publishing holding company with operations in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, …

Thomson Directories owner Seat Pagine Gialle has put the U.K. directory publishing group up for sale, according to an article in the Times Online. 
According to the article: “Thomson, which has been hit by competition from the web and reduced spending by financial clients, is expected to achieve earnings of £25m this year and could …

U.K. directory publisher Yell has launched a new Web site designed to help agencies and media buyers evaluate its multichannel products. Yell additionally has dedicated a team of specialists to work directly with agencies. Large accounts are widely viewed as a channeling segment for Yellow Pages publishers, and more tools and resources need to be devoted to …

Alibaba is China’s answer to Google and Yahoo!. The online site is 39 percent owned by Yahoo and recently entered a strategic partnership with Infomedia, the second-largest Yellow Pages publisher in India.
The agreement with Infomedia provides Alibaba access to the second-largest population in Asia. The deal with Infomedia opens the opportunity to sell online advertising …