Though public (or quasi public) knowledge for several months, Verizon has formally filed to sell its yellow pages print and online directory product units, Verizon Information Services/SuperPages.com. Here’s more detail from MarketWatch.
The article speculates the sale could fetch as much as $15 billion. Private equity firms are the likely buyers. Verizon is one of top two directory properties; the other being AT&T/YellowPages.com. Verizon’s directory publishing revenue was almost $3.5 billion in 2005.
Verizon has been by far the most experimental and innovative of the US directory publishers with its online product to date, embracing PPC marketing and PPCall (including in the print directory). It has also sought to expand the product definition by integrating web search, Shopping.com, eBay listings, ratings and reviews and other content to broaden the utility and usage frequency of SuperPages.com. Indeed, the company has sought to expand out from the notion of the product as a “yellow pages” site into something more like a local shopping portal.
Verizon is one of the top local search sites today in terms of uniques. And, interestingly, mobile research firm Telephia identified Verizon SuperPages as the third highest revenue-generating downloadable mobile application for Q1. (MapQuest mobile was #1, showing the demand for local information in a mobile context.)
In addition, the company has reconceived its role, vis-à-vis local businesses, from a “yellow pages publisher” to a local marketing agency, which sells print and online yellow pages in addition to other products (including SEM). Long term this is a very smart idea on several levels. Local businesses want and need a single point of contact to online marketing and the combined online-offline offering is quite powerful.
The sale probably will give new life and energy to SuperPages and its personnel. It will be interesting to see how the potential loss of the local sales channel affects Verizon, the mother ship, over the long term.
Here’s more information on Verizon from Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance and the potential sale from WSJ (sub. req’d).
Screenwerk 
July 8, 2006 at 2:51 am
To all you SuperPages folks with stock options – may you live long and PROSPER!
Chris
July 10, 2006 at 3:04 pm
They really have been the most progressive in the sector in teh US – let’s hope Superpages.com is bought by a conmpany as forward-looking as they have been who “get” search, and not some stuffy VC fund or print publsher.
MSN Local Pages, anyone?
July 18, 2006 at 12:03 pm
[…] Furthermore, SuperPages’ has been more experimental than other directory publishers and so being owned by a “new media” entity wouldn’t be as much of a culture shock as it would for other traditional media. (Here’s my previous post from when Verizon was put on the block.) […]
October 19, 2006 at 1:35 pm
[…] While AT&T has said it’s going to hold on to its YP assets (and local sales force) Verizon has become the latest telecom to cash out. The intended sale has been public for months but it wasn’t clear exactly what form it would take. […]