Month: January 2010

opt-in for Yellow Pages print directory distribution?

Yellow Pages print directories currently are distributed to all residences in an area unless a resident explicitly opts out of receiving a directory.  Many persons not interested in receiving a print directory probably don’t bother to opt out. The result is wasted money and wasted natural resources in distributing, re-collecting, and recyling unwanted directories.

An alternative would be to distribute print directories only to residences that explicitly request one (opt-in).  Some persons who might use  a print directory would fail to request one. But customers who find Yellow Pages very useful probably would be willing to request a free directory.

The requesting process could be used to customize directories for requesters.  Suppose persons interested in receiving a Yellow Pages print directory called a number or went to a website and answered some demographic and behavioral questions ( “How frequently do you use coupons?”, “How often do you go out to eat?”, “Do you like to try new products?”). A customized directory designed for particular interests and behaviors could then be delivered to requesters. Information is a key currency in new-media advertising. Even low-frequency interaction between Yellow Pages’ users and Yellow Pages producers might create a more valuable product.

Opt-in Yellow Pages print directory distribution probably isn’t an attractive business model as long as many small businesses believe that comprehensive distribution of Yellow Pages print directories implies extensive use of Yellow Pages.  More generally, smaller businesses have less incentive to invest the time and skill to analyze advertising-relevant information.  In the U.S. in 2005, businesses with less than a million dollars in annual business receipts spent in total $27 billion on advertising.  However, they had average annual advertising expenditure of only about $1000 per business (small business advertising data). Successful advertising products for small businesses have to make advertising performance information easy to understand.

fancy telephone services for small businesses

Telephone services for small businesses is a significant segment of the communications industry.  SOHO (small office/home office) is a widely recognized customer segment.  The SOHO segment is large and growing relatively rapidly.  In the U.S. in 2002, non-farm businesses with fewer than ten employees and with more than $10,000 in annual receipts numbered about 14 million and had $2.7 trillion in business receipts (about 12% of total U.S. non-farm business receipts). Small businesses that rent office space might also be able to contract with the facilities manager/owner for telephone services.  However, home-based small businesses don’t have that contracting opportunity.  In the U.S. in 2002, non-farm, home-based firms with fewer than ten employees and with more than $10,000 in annual receipts numbered about 6.8 million and had about $700 billion in business receipts.  These home-based, small businesses are predominately in construction, retail trade, and professional, scientific, technical and other services.[1]

Small businesses value fancy voice telephone services.  Persons running small businesses have to manage communications with suppliers, customers, and contractors. With respect to voice telephone communication, they benefit from services such as programmed greetings (attendant menus), flexible, programmed call routing across multiple devices and locations, call line hunt groups (if Jasmine’s line is busy, automatically route the call to Sasha’s line), and voice mail. They also benefit from being able to manage these services personally from a variety of devices.  Large businesses have acquired such capabilities through private-branch exchanges (PBX) and Centrex systems.  Capital costs, skill requirements, and maintenance requirements probably favor a hosted PBX or Centrex-type system for small businesses.  U.S. businesses with less than 9 Centrex lines purchased about 2.8 million Centrex lines in 2002. Those customers, who averaged 4.3 Centrex lines each, accounted for about 16% of total Centrex line purchases.[2] Small businesses have long been significant customers of manageable voice telephone services.

Competition for providing communications services to small businesses is producing cheap, highly capable services.  For example, Junction Network’s OnSIP provides hosted PBX service for small businesses.  Its $40 per month SOHO package offers unlimited short-number extensions, free, unlimited intra-extension calling, five voice mailboxes, three attendant menus, three hunt or simultaneous-ring groups, dial-by-name directories, business-hour routing of incoming calls, and a browser-based call management interface.  OnSIP describes itself as “a complete business VoIP service for 5 to 100 users.”  The disadvantages of OnSIP for businesses with only a few persons appears to be cost and complexity.  Google Voice (an app pre-installed on the Nexus One) is a free service, designed for individual use, that has some capabilities similar to OnSIP.  VoxOx is another free service designed for individual use.  VoxOx offers a powerful virtual personal assistant as well as a dead-end feature that’s probably even more valuable than industry-standard sorry-gotta-go scripting technologies.  BT’s Ribbit provides a platform on which a wide variety of cost-effective, manageable voice telephone services can be developed.

Competition in providing manageable voice telephone services for individuals, non-employer businesses, and employer businesses with only a few employees is likely to reconnect the telephone business to the local advertising business.  AT&T introduced “Where to Buy It” telephone directories in 1928.  In 2007, U.S. Yellow Pages directories had about $14 billion in advertising revenue.  Moreover, about $71 billion of newspaper, radio, and television advertising is local advertising.[3]  Print yellow pages, newspapers, radio, and television are moving to networked digital devices. Providing small business telephone services is likely to provide an important advantage in providing small-business advertising and local information search.  That’s the historical story of the Yellow Pages.  That’s a story that now seems ready to be re-enacted, but perhaps with different main characters.

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Data: U.S small businesses and Centrex services workbook (Excel version); coded Bell Atlantic / Verizon Centrex rate elements, 1998-2009, compiled from the full rate-detail dataset

Notes:

[1] The figures for home-based businesses are my estimates.  For the source, detailed data, and estimation formulas, see the small business worksheet in the Excel version of the small business/Centrex workbook.

[2] For data details, see the Centrex worksheet.

[3]  Radio, television, and newspaper advertising, separated into local and national, is available in the full Coen Advertising dataset.  Those figures show local radio advertising, local television (cable and broadcast) advertising, and local newspaper advertising to be 53% of total advertising.  The Coen over-all local/national advertising figures for 2007 show local advertising to be 34% of total advertising.  However, the Coen over-all local/national ad figures include all direct mail advertising and almost all miscellaneous advertising as national advertising.

yellow pages print directory distribution

The traditional mass distribution of yellow pages print directories isn’t effective where I live.  In my 148-unit apartment complex, stacks of new yellowbooks were recently placed outside entryways during the day on Thursday. About 7pm that evening, 146 yellowbooks remained.  The next evening, 139 remained. The following Tuesday morning, 134 books remained. Later that day, apartment staff recycled those remaining books. Hence apartment residents picked up only about 10% of the yellow pages directories placed in entryways.

I also looked at yellow pages directory distribution through two CVS stores in my neighborhood.  On December 16, 2009, the day my apartment complex received the new 2010 yellowbooks, the first CVS had five 2009-2010 (old) yellowbooks, and the second had two.  The top books in both stacks were quite dusty.  I’d guess that no one had picked up a yellowbook at these stores for at least several months.  By January 6, 2010, the first CVS had removed the distribution rack and the yellowbooks, while the second CVS still had the distribution rack.  It contained one 2009-2010 yellowbook.  Hence someone picked up from CVS an old yellowbook.  Maybe someone is using it to make a spending decision, or to clean a bike, or just maybe a homeless person took it for toilet paper.

Whether someone bothers to pick up a yellow pages directory is a crude measure of the performance of yellow pages ads.  But given that only 10% of the yellow pages directories were picked up from my apartment complex, the performance of ads in those directories probably isn’t very good.  The performance of ads in yellow pages directories available for pickup in CVS probably isn’t much better.

New media is offering powerful new means for making advertising relevant, useful, and accountable.  Changes in advertising are disrupting major businesses and challenging well-established organizational practices. That about 418 pounds of yellow pages directories were dropped at my apartment complex and then carted away is just a small act in the astonishing spectacle of media change.

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Data: yellow pages print directory retrieval in my apartment complex (Excel version)

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male sexual self-wounding

male god in preclassical Mayan mural at San Bartolo

In a preclassical Mayan creation mural from San Bartolo and dated to roughly 100 BGC, male gods draw blood from their penises as part of acts to establish the cosmos.  Wounding one’s own reproductive organ is odd behavior from an evolutionary perspective.

The wounding effect is naturally related to the female reproductive cycle.  Perhaps male sexual insecurity partly explains male sexual self-wounding.