I recently spent two weeks attending directory industry events and meeting with companies in the space in Europe and Asia. Many of the issues facing the industry are amazingly consistent across geographical boundaries. There is a need to transform, and quickly, in the Philippines as well as Scandinavia, not to mention the United States. Some …

Last night, Local Insight Media’s parent company filed for Chapter 11 protection. In speaking with President and CEO Scott Pomeroy early this morning, it became clear that this is a necessary step in ensuring the business can recapitalize its debt structure in the coming months.
Few followers of the Yellow Pages industry will find today’s announcement …

ZipLocal, the U.S. independent directory publisher, has launched a new “hyper local” leads-based advertising model called Local Leads that taps into a distribution network featuring 18 properties and 80 billion monthly impressions, according to ZipLocal execs who briefed us last week. The main players in the network are CityGrid, SuperMedia, Chitika and DiscoverOurTown.
ZipLocal is the publisher …

It’s Yellow Pages earnings season again. AT&T is usually among the first out with its results, and the latest numbers show a worsening picture for its Advertising Solutions business, which includes print Yellow Pages and yp.com. The results are compounded by very modest growth in Internet revenues, an area that AT&T is counting on to stabilize the …

I am planning to attend an event next month in London called IYP Search Meet 2010, which is aimed at giving those in the Yellow Pages world in charge of making online directory products better an opportunity to share best practices with their peers. This event is meant to bridge the gap between strategic level …

The independent directory publishers gathered here at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver for the past two days appear to be even more convinced than ever that the print directory product is not only their past but also their future, or at least a big part of it.
What threatens this future is not the shifting …

The Nordics directory publisher Eniro seems to have a success on its hands with its new “search and purchase” directory, launched Sept. 29. The company announced today that since that product was launched, the number of searches for “points of sale and companies” on Eniro.se has increased by 40 percent.
In addition, the company’s stock price …

SuperMedia announced today that CEO Scott Klein has resigned, effective immediately and has been replaced by industry veteran Peter McDonald, who was most recently president of DexOne (then R.H. Donnelley).
BIA/Kelsey understands that the company’s largest debt holders have been conducting a thorough review of the business, and this action may be one of the outcomes …

Two sometimes rival U.S. directory industry associations have joined forces to build a more robust one-stop opt-out Web site (due out early next year) that they hope will mitigate the growing trend toward  local opt-out legislation. The new site will replace the existing www.yellowpagesoptout.com and will use the same URL.
The industry has followed a two-pronged …

The Canadian publisher DirectWest has teamed up with VendAsta to enter the hot group buying space.The new service will be called Mysaskdeals, and it is reportedly the first of its kind in Saskatchewan.
“We are very excited about this new offering,” said Gord Farmer, DirectWest President & CEO. “For more than 50 years, DirectWest has been …

The Canadian publisher DirectWest has teamed up with VendAsta to enter the hot group buying space. The new service will be called Mysaskdeals, and it is reportedly the first of its kind in Saskatchewan.
“We are very excited about this new offering,” said Gord Farmer, DirectWest president and CEO. “For more than 50 years, DirectWest has …

We had the opportunity to spend a few minutes this morning with Alfred Mockett, the new CEO of Dex One, on his first day on the job, and it’s clear that he plans to follow an aggressive change management agenda.
Mockett replaces Dave Swanson, who announced his retirement in May. Since then, Dex One has been …

The reputation management space will be yet another hot topic at DMS ’10 next week. It’s garnered a lot of press and new competitors in the past year, and as BIA/Kelsey anticipates this area to grow to roughly $3.1B in revenues by 2013, it warrants the attention.
The conference will kick off on Tuesday, Sept. 14, …

With just a few days remaining before the start of our DMS ’10 conference in Dallas, we wanted to preview a couple of hot topics that will likely receive a lot of buzz at the show. I will be co-moderating a session on Leads-Based Selling, about as hot a topic as there is in the …

Pretty big news from Dex One today. The company announced this morning that it has a deal with rival SuperMedia that allows advertisers from each site to have their business profiles appear on the other publisher’s online directory. The obvious benefit to advertisers is an immediate boost in their business’ exposure online.
Each company would continue …

SuperMedia has joined the list of directory publishers rolling out complete overhauls of their online Yellow Pages directories. Today, the publisher unveiled a new version of SuperPages.com, which featured more local content, more robust merchant info on search results page, a strong emphasis on video, coupons and vertical content as well (notably its EveryCarListed automotive …

In case you didn’t see these, here are links to some of the more important posts from the past week on our Global Yellow Pages blog. Be sure to submit your e-mail address to “Subscribe to Our Blog.” You will then be updated whenever we post something new about the rapidly changing directory industry.
Dex One, …

Eniro has replaced Jesper Karrbrink as CEO of the Swedish directory company with Johan Lindgren, former CEO of Telenor Sweden.
Eniro’s board is apparently frustrated at the pace of improvement resulting from the new strategy put in place by Karrbrink. In addition, Eniro has violated loan covenants, and may feel it needs a management team that …

The U.K. directory publisher Yell’s stock had its best day of trading in months, leading to speculation that the company might be a takeover target. Another report suggests the increase may not be the result of a takeover bid, but rather of traders closing short positions. Yell’s shares rose by more than 13 percent Thursday …

Dex One and Yahoo have extended and expanded their long-term partnership to roughly double the geographic coverage of the existing distribution partnership. The arrangement essentially involves business profile pages sold by Dex being served up in Yahoo Local search results, now in all 28 states where Dex One operates. The original partnership, formed in 2007, …