In this general article on the state of print YP advertising, a Dex spokesman shared national advertiser numbers:
About 13,000 businesses advertise with Dex in the Phoenix area, and 600,000 advertise nationally, Larmey said. Of the total advertisers, 200,000 are advertising online and in print.
The questions are:
1. What’s the average those 200K are spending online? (probably about $100 to $200 per month)
2. How many are specifically requesting/buying online in a conscious way, as opposed to it being something thrown in as part of a larger bundle that focuses primarily on print?
Still, the 200K figure is impressive. If that 1/3 figure is extrapolated across the YP industry it would mean there are about 1 million largely SMB advertisers online from that channel alone (assuming a base of 3 million active advertisers). That number is probably somewhat aggressive, however.
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Update: see comments for dispute of these figures.
Screenwerk 
August 27, 2008 at 4:19 am
Spin …….Spin…..600K was their number 17 months ago. That was anyone doing a $10/mo bold listing in their print yellow pages, to somone doing a $39/mo IYP placement play on DexKnows. That was inflated at the time. Reality was that it was more like 510K. They are dropping total live advertisers by 9% annually, according to internal documents circulating. They had 25K online budget based customers back in late 2007 and 110K IYP customers. They are going to a new product in november 2008 and that has caused their reps to slow down selling thier current product. Renewals for the budget based products at less than 60%, and the math really doesn’t add up to the statements on the release. The take rate on their new product will be very minimal. Current Internet Sales Managers are doing workshops to prep their Union sales force …..but the reps are not buying it. They will most likely do a play that gives all their print customers a paid online presence (think $49/mo)(a product with on teeth to reflect ROI) and they’ll call it ………500K advertisers online. Spin.
August 27, 2008 at 7:43 am
Curious if the advertisements are search oriented ( top positions for sponsored) or traditional pay to be listed online? Also, if it’s a bundled package, I’d presume the advertisers are comfortable with old way of tracking/reporting ( which is none)
August 27, 2008 at 11:55 am
Dogma:
If that’s all correct, then it’s very much like the newspaper industry accounting re online advertisers.
August 27, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Dogma: That is interesting information.
I’ve a question. Is DEX the major YP in the Phoenix area?
I was looking at this data from a different perspective. According to Arizona govt info, there are about 76,000 businesses with employees in the county that includes Phoenix and another 200,000 that are described as non-employee businesses (a lot of categories including work at home, individuals with contracts rather than salaries, etc.
That is a huge untapped volume of business if one option to get a YP listing is a $10/month line item in the print YP.
What are these businesses and why aren’t they advertising.
Would they like my help? 😀