London — Yell, the UK based international directories company, has entered into an strategic alliance with Google, targeted at small and medium businesses to resell AdWords in the UK, further expanding the properties on which it can sell advertising beyond its own sites.
The debt-laden directories group, which is responsible for the Yellow Pages, whose business structure has been sabotaged by classified advertising’s move online, last week sought an alliance to offer a service to manage Google AdWords online advertising campaigns on behalf of its customers, which will help it to expand its current online services in the Digital Media arena.
The Yell Group was predicts to lose 12% of its total advertising revenue in the opening quarter of 2009, joining with Google should prove a timely intervention to help boost company revenue.
The Search Marketing Service platform, which has been under development phase for a year, automates many of the labor intensive ad creation, bid optimization and campaign management functions that have presented barriers to the adoption of search by UK SMEs, claims Yell.
The service will assist businesses place advertise of themselves on search engines such as Google and generate additional sales leads. Businesses which do not have the time or skill to set up and manage such a facility will particularly helpful.
Yell will function as an authorized Google AdWords reseller, taking on the responsibility of managing and purchasing Google AdWords on behalf of businesses. Search results direct users to a web page created and hosted by Yell.
Yell states the Search Marketing Service which will be introduced this week forms a part of its strategy to offer access to leads from all online sources to Yell advertisers.
According to Mark Canon, Yell UK president of new media, the service combines Yell’s expertise in local advertising, its position of trust and close working relationship with more than 450,000 UK business advertisers with Google’s market leading AdWords search marketing program and large user base.
In 2008, Yell.com succeeded in increasing its Online Advertising sales by 20%, but despite that growth, the age old business model of the Yellow Pages is exhausting money faster than online success can replace the losses. Yell has some 217,000 web advertisers at its disposal, but this is still some way short of preventing the company falling further into debt.
Head of Google UK, Matt Brittin commented on the forged alliance: “In these tough economic times, Yell will now be able to offer the benefits of targeted, accountable and cost effective online advertising via AdWords to thousands of small businesses in the UK,” according to a joint press release.
Google AdWords works by combining keywords provided by advertisers to those consumers use in Google searches, and displays the ads as sponsored links. The prominence with which the ads appear is determined by an auction process, and the relevance of the ads.
“Yell’s Search Marketing service… is part of a wider strategy to make leads from all online sources accessible to Yell advertisers,” the company said in a statement.
Last month, Yell relaunched its online business Yell.com that features new functionalities, including video and advertiser generated content.
The company also lately expanded the advertising campaign for its directory enquiries service 118 24 7, after recording a 70% increase in call volumes to its UK call centers.
The 30 second TV ad created by Rapier, featuring cult Internet cartoon character “Magical Trevor,” has been extended to 60 seconds.