Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI
I headlined earlier this week: Kelsey: You’ll Still Have Yellow Pages To Kick Around Some More. Kelsey CEO Neal Polachek now underscores that yes, Yellow Pages will live another day, or two.
Polachek’s Scrooge worthy “Christmas Story” of his car being rammed, his house being infested by vermin and his commode refusing to perform, has a happy Yellow Pages ending. Polachek shares that he turned to his “phone book” NOT to the World Wide Web to find eager, ready to serve auto repair, pest control and plumbing professionals.
BUT, what about the Polachek family’s Festival Of Lights? WHERE did Neal turn to search for how to spend his Hannukah gelt on toys, apparel, dining out…? Typical searchers do their everday “look ups” at Google, as Yellow Pages know all to well.
Recession Hits AT&T Online: Kelsey Local Search Advertising Predictions Too?, however, I analyzed earlier this week, underscoring the persistent roadblocks that continue to thwart en masse online advertising adoption on the part of local businesses.
Nevertheless, Kelsey analysts’ 2008 predictions echo persistent conventional local wisdom of a seemingly preordained inevitablity of “big increases in local search inventory” and an unstoppable victory of the new, (purportedly) more rational Web model over the old, (supposedly) frustratingly irrational print directory framework:
In the past, small and medium-sized businesses have protected their print Yellow Pages investment at the expense of other media. Given the structural changes in the local ad market, we believe the next downturn will favor media choices that are more flexible and provide a lower cost per lead than print directories, which would signal a profound shift: the Kelsey Yellow Pages point man, Charles Laughlin.
In the long term, we remain bullish that online and mobile products will bring in better than one-to-one conversion rates because of their superior return on investment: the Kelsey online verticals evangelist, Peter Krasilovsky.
BUT, are the Google inspired claims that an online ad spend is structurally inherently better than an offline one bankable? NO, not for the legions of single store, owner/operator local merchants that comprise the long and challenging sales cycle bulk of the ever elusive, but big, local business advertising opportunity.
Google’s superiority is clear on one front: Its ability to envelope a Google-centric, non-transparent, advertisers bid up their own rate cards, not marketer friendly, black box GOOG fuel money making machine in claims of irreproachable “accountability” and unbeatable “pay (only) for performance,” which even analysts willingly succumb to.
The big, bad Google “performance” ROI myth is that the “performance” being sold is a click, NOT a sale. The supposed impending holy grail of Pay Per Call products also is based on “performance” ROI myths: Advertiser costs are driven up for the extra perceived “accountability,” but the “performance” being sold is a call, still NOT a sale.
A call may be more valuable than a click, BUT it is also not a true performance metric for the only advertising result that counts at the end of the local merchant day: A local sale.
The Kelsey Group continues to hail the power and potential of call tracking: Polachek seized his Yellow Pages to the holiday rescue adventure to plug the up sell service to a Yellow Pages advertiser. Here at Insider Chatter, however, I WARN local merchants of the perils of call tracking as it is currently packaged and sold.
1-800 Pay-Per-Call: Marchex Buys VoiceStar, $4 billion Local Advertising Bonanza? I anlayzed in August.
The big, bad ”secret” dark side of the pay-per-call opportunity is that local advertisers often loose exposure of their REAL phone numbers by accepting call-tracking with random vendor supplied 800 numbers, as the Citysearch specs for its Pay For Performance-Calls product indicate:
Merchants are charged a fee per call and when an advertising cap is reached the toll free number (which appears throughout the site) is removed and replaced with the local, non-metered number…Citysearch provides a toll free number wherever the local merchant’s contact information appears: PFP ads, search results, merchant information page, and/or Best Of Citysearch listing.
LOCAL MERCHANT ROI PROBLEMS?
Customers jot down the toll free number to call another time, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?
Customers print out the merchant info page for an out of town trip, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?
Customers want to call the merchant a year later but don’t have the merchant’s real phone number…
The REAL bottom line local advertising problem? Old media or new, from Yellow Pages to Google, media companies spend their money and their energy in trying to PROVE to local merchants that their ad products are good for their businesses, rather than making sure they actually are.
MORE: Frugal Google.org: How NOT To Save the World On $159,000 a Day and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why and
Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows