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paybacksa - 2:40 pm on Mar 15, 2005 (gmt 0)
Your perspectve changes when your local community has 5 competitors in your industry, and after a few years the local YP has 5 half-page color dislay ads all proclaiming basically the same things. It started with 5 listings, at $40 each per month, and now it's 5 half-page ads at $800 each *per month* --one year contract required as well as 4 months lead time on the ad. Then factor in that it all goes through a foot salesman, who does sometimes leak info on your ad to your competitors prior to the hard deadline. Wanna see the page your ad will compete on before you place your ad? Nope. In my opinion if you want to understand local search start a local business (or get close to one). From what I have experienced:
I'm not sure many WebmasterWorld'ers are customers of their own local YPs, and if that is true they might not have a local perspective.
On a related note, I am seeing the separation of phone number from physical location and carrier making a big difference. A large display ad is more affordable if it displays a website URL and a phone number which can be easly redirected (such as VoIP). More innovative business owners are using this to their advantage, and they are doing that before investing more in the web. On the flip side, I have seen YP salesmen trying very hard to influence the ad design when it comes to physical address and such... even to the extent in one case that it led to a lawsuit (do the math: $800 x 12 months = $7,200 which is not penny change to a small business). My nose smells sales incentive, like the company has expressed an interest in controlling the use of the ads, and incetivizes the salesforce accordingly.
Opportunity? Same as SEM. Segment the market clearly and identifiably, and dominate the long tail one segment at a time. The big portal wants a big market, and you want a segmented market.