Since so many opinions these days seem to be based on anecdotal evidence, let me add another anecdote to the mix.
I am sitting in a coffee shop near where I live doing e-mail and so on. In walks a very stylish young woman, no older than 30. She gets a coffee, sits down and …

I’ve taken a quick look at the R.H. Donnelley earnings release before the company’s much-anticipated earnings call this morning. Here are a few quick highlights:

The company posted ad sales of US$2,743 million, an increase of 0.4 percent. Net revenues were US$2,680 million, down from US$2,688 million in 2006.
The company is giving a gloomier outlook for …

Newspapers increasingly see an opportunity to sell SEO/SEM solutions to local advertisers. Such efforts probably began in earnest last year with members of the Yahoo! consortium using Yahoo!’s platforms. Others have been working with WebVisible and other resellers on a custom basis. But things seem to have been heating up, prior to the NAA Marketing …

Thursday was a very rough day for publicly traded directory companies. With Idearc and Yell announcing results that show more weakness in print directories, the two companies’ shares moved sharply downward.
As of this writing Thursday afternoon, Idearc shares had lost roughly a quarter of their value, while Yell had declined more than 15 percent. R.H. Donnelley, which …

I was at SES Chicago yesterday moderating a couple of panels, sharing duty with my colleague Mike Boland on the local track presented by The Kelsey Group. My first opportunity of the day was to interview Charles Stubbs of Yellowpages.com. Those who were there benefited from a wide-ranging talk about how YPC is doing, why …

Deutsche Bank media analyst Paul Ginocchio and his team released a research report last week in which the bank reaffirmed its target share price for R.H. Donnelley (US$80 — reduced to US$65 this week after RHD issued its year-end guidance) and “Buy” rating and issued a less glowing assessment of Idearc Media, for which it …

It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an excellent partnership with SES.
Our next conference, April 30-May 2 at the Westin in Seattle, will …

Jake Winebaum, president of RHDi and CEO of Business.com, a self-admitted neophyte in the local search space, shared his unique “new guy” perspective of the state of selling local search to small businesses at ILM:07. Now working for a large incumbent directory publisher, R.H Donnelley, Winebaum outlined a number of critical challenges and advantages of …