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AT&T subsidiary YellowPages.com will be including its paid advertising
listings on Microsoft's local search sites (Live Search and Live Search Maps
properties) in an distribution agreement announced yesterday. The deal in
effect replaces Idearc's (owners of SuperPages.com) relationship with Microsoft
and means that AT&T has closed distribution agreements with AOL, Microsoft and
Yahoo!.
What does this mean for local online advertisers?
Perhaps it's now time to consider promoting your local businesses' Web
destination on the YellowPages.com network. There are free listings available
but paid listings are what will get you new customers from exposure in the
search media properties of Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo.
Unfortunately, there is
little in the way of ad pricing on the site itself (and no self-service model?)
but Video Profiles, Premium Inventory Listings, Search Engine Solutions and Web
site solutions could be worth the time investigating.
UPDATE: Idearc has formally responded to this post.
"Our agreement with MSN was expiring in April. The traffic from MSN had not met our expectations and had not performed as we had hoped, so we would not have renewed that agreement without significant changes. We are continuing to pursue other opportunities for our advertisers -- given that we have a performance-based model and a different strategy than MSN."