YP Corp., owner of YP.com, acquired classifieds marketplace LiveDeal in June in an effort to bring together classifieds listings and yellow pages. Now the combined entity has changed its name to LiveDeal. That does two things:
- Closes the door on the dubious legacy of the old YP.net sales practices (no longer happening says the company)
- Creates a broader brand to accommodate a product roadmap that may well evolve beyond traditional directory and classifieds sites
As I said at the time of the acquisition:
The combination of classifieds and yellow pages presents a powerful opportunity over the long term. There’s something of an artificial separation between classifieds and directories, owing to the history of newspapers and yellow pages offline. This kind of deal brings the two local ad categories together.
I was told that both the YP.com and LiveDeal sites would continue to operate, although over time the LiveDeal brand will likely be the one that is used, paving the way for the inclusion of additional “shopping” categories. In Canada, directory publisher Yellow Pages Group has made aggressive moves into online classifieds.
As I mentioned in my SEL post, the category “classifieds” (which includes verticals jobs, cars and real estate) is the third largest Internet ad category, capturing 18 percent of online ad spending according to the IAB, behind only display and search. Traditional U.S. directory and classifieds ad revenues were worth more than $30 billion in 2006.
The company will maintain the YP.com site as a subset of its overall business but will likely focus much more if its development efforts on LiveDeal as a comprehensive local marketplace.
Screenwerk 
December 19, 2008 at 10:00 pm
[…] YP.com was owned by the company that became LiveDeal after a merger of the two entities more than a year ago. The YP.com brand had become tainted by […]