Verizon to Sell Yellow Page Ads to Highest Bidder

When Google began selling ads into print magazines, it seemed that they might well start printing up phone books, maps and travel guides, etc. But, since their initial program was somewhat unsuccessful, it's possible that they'll be more conservative about further print inroads...

Undoubtedly, this new type of business referral service could also be spread over to search engines, as well as to other print media.

The telcos and directory companies have indeed seen a lot of consolidation in recent years, and it makes consumer advocates very nostalgic for the days of the breakup of Ma Bell. Industry analysts are predicting more consolidation ahead.

Regarding your question about whether the caller is referred to a good-quality business or not, I know that there are some standards applied for whether a company is allowed to advertise in certain ways within the Verizon yellow pages. For instance, there is certain text or descriptions which businesses are not allowed to use for certain industries, and businesses can get booted out of adverts for falsely claiming services they don't offer.

In my opinion, pay per call ads are an ideal product for people who are concerned about costs of click fraud, as per another one of your threads.

I've just written an article about pay for call being a solution for click fraud, if anybody were interested more in that subject.

(I should note that I don't speak officially for Verizon SuperPages -- I'm just an employee, and these statements and opinions are all my own.)

If you're a pizza joint, and everyone about town starts using the generic number to order pizza, it's a great way to gain new business. Unfortunately if you're not the high bidder, all that business is immediately going to go to your competitors - that very same day. So from that perspective it's a good business model.

Unfortunately, it's all or nothing. If you're the second highest bidder you get nothing - unlike adwords. And that I think is the Achilles heel of this affair.

Thanks for the comment Silver.

My question was more from this angle: since you guys write the ad copy for some of the ads, does that put you in some legal position for the companies you refer leads to? ie: if your ads claim "Reliable and Professional" does that corner off that market to new businesses that have yet to prove their reliability? does it at all make Verizon at fault if the business provider provides bad business?

As far as Wheel's complaint goes, I bet they allow you to bid on a max number of calls as well as max bid.

Hard to comment honestly publicly... there just doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to post honest info for free in a public forum. Lots of reasons to post info... to mislead, to make money, to influence the market....

Oh, now about those PPC/highest bidder "yellow pages". Bad bad bad idea. A sign of desperation? Or perhaps an aggressive move to eliminate some of the public trust currently placed in YP. You be the judge :-)

Now if I were to make a mental image of Verizon's Corporate Personality, I might be able to better judge their motivation. That combined with a check of their current penetration in the printed YP market. Again, you be the judge.

Now swap hats to be the SMB owner and consumer of all those non_verizon printed YP books out there. You know the ones that spend 5-10k/year for an ad an then relax because they know they are "in it". No metrics, no changes, but that's ok. Customers say they saw the ad in the "phone book" so it must be working.

I am reminded of the kid who doesn't play well with others so he f*cks it up for everybody just to see the chips fall again.... maybe he can get a better deal. Welcome to the age of the ADD corporation.

VOIP and PPC fraud, or game playing, or kiddies attack for their juvenile entertainment, or auto-dialers with voice response attack, or VOIPDDOS attacks, or . . did I say there will be no end to how people of ill intent will make their mark?

How about just plain stupid or clever: Discover the phone number of the day and then email spam the number? Then a whole group of unhappy people call the number.

Ya, PPCall fraud will likely be more about malice than profit . . . or maybe it will be about profiting by assuring that someone else doesn't profit?

Damn. Such a grim view of the world. Actually, not quite. My point is that the proponents of PPCall would like to position PPCall as the remedy for competitive practices based upon harming another (or profiting at the expense of another). All you have to do is redefine profit from direct profit (PPC fraud on AdSense) into fraud premised upon another not profiting at your expense and PPCall just becomes another system to game.

I'm sure with a little more thought we could come up with more ways that PPCall will be gamed, but it's not my gig, so I ain't putting in the time.

Hey, on a lighter-brighter side - wasn't the weather wonderful today in the mid-Atlantic region of the States? Spring arrives. :)

Is there any reason the phone companies need to do this? I can place an ad in yellow pages for Taxi service and do the same thing with a phone line and a call redirect.

They should stick to providing factual ads and let advetisers bid for the realestate on their pages. After all, isn't that what yellow pages is for?

So, depending on who is bidding highest that day, I get a good pizza or stomach poisoning.

It won't be the *great* pizza, because they are already well known enough by word of mouth not to bother. (edited to insert the word "be")

Oh, and the cab I'm going home is going to cost a few bucks more, just because of the ppc.

Business 2.0 is *not* good for the individual. The marketing visionaries are about as useful as the hr people who outsource everything because they can't actually be bothered to throw a resume into the garbage can. It's a bunch of clowns running around trying to do anything other than actually offer great service. In the new age, marketing trumps value.

I'm going to patent pay per pull beer taps!

You get whatever brand of horse piss that happens to be bidding the most at the time you belly up to the bar at pubcon.

How about beer taps that change labels depending on who bids highest? Only one generic beer to stock and wire up the handles like a slot machine. Pull the handle and see what you get. Hey, the *enhanced user experience* ought to be worth a premium right?

SlyOldDog, would that be a 301 or a 302?

Strangely enough, there have been companies already that bought high-profile ads in phone books under the representation that they provided services in a particular category and locality, but they were really referral services themselves, sending the work out to companies in that area with which they were partnered.

So, a yellow pages company was not the first to use this business model, and you may have already used a company in such a scenario, without even knowing it.

Regarding the question on liability for representations in such ads, I'd expect that the ad copy is of such generic wording as to not incur such liability. Many advertisers are already using terms like "reliable" or "professional", though there's not necessarily any comparative measurement out there which could be used to assess whether a company is reliable or professional -- those are fairly subjective criteria. For some industries, there is specific wording which can and cannot be used in advertising their businesses, such as various legal specialities.

Now, if the ad said "free soft drink with your cab ride", and the company didn't make good on that, perhaps there would be some shared responsibility.

In my opinion, it's the responsibility of the business whether they do a good job or not, not the advertising company or referral service, just as with other types of advertising. Certainly a referral service might not want to send customers to a bad company, though, since users would then distrust the referral service. It's just difficult to be the police in such things, and even good businesses will have bad moments or occasional complaints.

Oh, and why would a company need to offer new or different products? Most companies are looking for ways to innovate and maximize profits for shareholders. Perhaps the product fits a niche with a particular user and advertiser segment that other products do not cover. Why do anything new? To make a profit. Market forces will decide if the speculative new product is successful or not.

It won't the *great* pizza, because they are already well known enough by word of mouth not to bother.

That is the same issue with AdSense. The best don't need to advertise, and the better content is at solving answers the less need there is for the ads.

The same issue exists with Google ads on the maps...if the product is useful the ads are unnecessary or lead to inferior product.

or just a copycat,

or dressing up old in a Business 2.0 wrapper and charging more for it.

or my favourite, a solution looking for a problem.

If *I* take the trouble to drag out the Yellow Pages(TM), I want to read an ad specifically written by the company offering the product, not some generic come on written by some bubblehead.

These people are cannibalizing their existing customer base. When they catch on, it's bye-bye Verizon.

At 2 bucks a pop, it would be cheaper for me to setup a stand out front and give out free slices. Can you smell the cheese on PPC? I don't care how well you write, that slice is going to out sell the copy everytime. Unless of course, the pizza is cardboard, in which case I recommend the Business 2.0 model, sell the shit out of a shit product and look into franchising it out to someone even more desperate.

At 4 bucks a pop, the additional cab fare would get me on the subway. And the entertainment is free!

Where is the value add? Time for the freshly minted MBA's to go home and keep the PHD's company.

At least if they are paying $ for the call you know they'll answer the phone :)

I actually discussed working on this project with Verizon a few months ago and ran screaming. When I spoke to them, it was clear to me that the right hand didn't know what the left was doing. It was the most corporate confusion I have ever seen in a project in my life. They kept referring to 'the deal' with google they were going to have and how they wanted to incorporate SEO into their business model.

But the thing is, they didn't understand SEO enough to even understand what it was they were asking for. I tried to nail them down on specifics, such as PPC and organic search, and fixing code and was told "Well, nothing specific has been decided yet, but it was a PPC-like model."

I actually laughed in the gal's face when we started talking money and their idea of paying for 'SEO for Verizon Super Pages' was under $20 per hour.

They called me for weeks after that leaving messages for me to call back. I didn't waste my time.