Verizon’s online yellow pages directory, SuperPages.com, has forged a deal to use its advertisers’ excess budgets to purchase keyword ads on Google AdWords, and add the search engine’s main page to its list of external distribution partners.
The deal will help its tens of thousands of marketers get ads onto Google search result pages, the companies said in a statement.
We are pleased Verizon is an authorized AdWords reseller and helping local small businesses take advantage of the opportunities of search advertising, Google said in a statement.
SuperPages will offer its advertisers the ability to bid for Google search terms where appropriate for their business in a resale agreement that will appear in print and online, opening up new avenues for local advertisers seeking potential customers online, something Google and other big Internet companies do not have the resources to do, Eric Chandler, president of the Internet division at Verizon SuperPages.com, said here in a keynote at The Kelsey Group Drilling Down on Local conference.
We do not have as much traffic as Google so this gives our advertisers a much broader reach and gives Google access to small businesses in their localities, SuperPages spokeswoman Dana Benton Russell said.
Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling said the deal beefs up SuperPages’ network with additional inventory and traffic. That is something they have been concerned about–their early efforts did not yield the same quality that they get from direct traffic, he said.
"What SuperPages’ problem has been is that they have advertisers who are hungry for more traffic, and that is why they built out this external distribution network."
SuperPages.com is pursuing deals with AOL and Ask.com, and also attempting to forge deals with MSN and Yahoo, said Chandler.
SuperPages.com already provides business profiles to Google so that some search results include links to more information about particular businesses on SuperPages.com, Chandler said.
Deals like this are critical to move the local search market forward because these businesses would not go on their own to Google or Yahoo, said Sterling. There is a lot of inertia in the small-business market, which relies on sales representatives to call them or visit, he said.
Verizon SuperPages.com powers MSN’s yellow pages and provides advertisers for MSN Local and MSN Virtual Earth, Chandler said. "As Microsoft’s AdCenter launches this summer, there will be opportunities for us to work with them on a deeper level," he said.
The Google deal also gives Verizon SuperPages.com advertisers access to search results pages on America Online and Ask.com through their deals with Google, he said.
The new arrangement "marries our sales channel opportunities with Google’s vast advertising network," he said in an interview after the session. "We play a key role in this whole ecosystem. We are the enablers to get this group (small merchants) online."
SuperPages’ is part of the Verizon Information Services division, a $3.5 billion business that provides yellow pages and shopping information in print, on the Internet and via wireless carriers. SuperPages alone have about 16 million businesses listed, the company said.
SuperPages sales staff will be trained by Google to use and manage AdWords purchases on behalf of their clients.
Local search is viewed as one of the most promising growth areas for Web search companies, which earn the lion’s share of their revenue from search listings targeted more specifically to individual users.
But connecting small businesses without technological infrastructure to an expert bidding system for search terms has proven a longer-term process than linking up large national advertisers, the core of search advertising revenue.
Google created a resale framework for its AdWords search program in late 2004 in a partnership with BellSouth Corp.’s online yellow pages.
In December, Verizon said it would consider selling or spinning off its directories unit. Analysts estimate the division could fetch as much as $17 billion and would invite interest from Google and rival search engine Yahoo Inc.
Sterling said that similar deals between local directories and search engines are win-win situations for the advertisers, directories, and the engines themselves. It gives more cache to [SuperPages’] external network, he said. It enables the local advertiser to get into areas where they would not otherwise, and it helps the search engine get access to revenue that they would not normally–the stars are aligned for all these players right now, and that is why these deals work.
However, Sterling said, if local advertisers begin learning how to save money by going to the search engines directly, these deals could become less lucrative.