UK directory publisher Yell put out a release this morning that it was becoming an AdWords reseller:
Yell, the international directories business, and Google today announce a strategic alliance to provide sophisticated, managed search marketing services to Yell’s base of more than 450,000 UK SMEs. The alliance will involve Yell becoming a Google AdWords Authorised Reseller.
I had thought this was already going on but I suppose I was wrong. The release says that this is only the second deal that Yell has entered to sell traffic beyond its own properties:
The Search Marketing Service for Google AdWords is the second product launch from Yell involving sale of inventory beyond Yell’s own portfolio of Yellow Pages, Yell.com and 118 24 7. Yell has already launched an ad network product, netReach, providing Yell advertisers with access to consumers across a business vertical and geo-targeted network of UK sites. The service has been well received by existing and new customers to Yell.
Yell’s netReach is a contextual ad network — something like AdSense but with true local advertisers. This would be a smart program to emulate for American publishers. And there are even more radical steps along these lines that can be taken by publishers to expand their traffic.
One question is whether Yell’s program will have greater success (retention) than some of the other resellers who see very high churn rates. This is a fundamental problem in these programs.
Screenwerk 
May 14, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Greg – Is Yell alone (as a major publisher) in reselling w/o a WebVisible or other third party to administer the ad management function? I wonder if that is the subtext of the story – that Yell went direct w/ Google.
May 14, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Not sure re third party vendors. They might be doing it all themselves. But if they are that doesn’t preclude the kind of 50% to 100% annualized churn that these programs see.
May 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The first two “authorized reseller platform” deals from Google (Marchex, Yell) are both with companies who’s offerings extensively rely on alternate (non- Google PPC) traffic sources. Not sure what to make of that.
To Richards comments i believe Yell has developed their own proprietary bidding platform, Mark Cannon is definitely a build vs. buy kinda operator.
June 25, 2010 at 3:45 am
Greg, Rich; Yell’s built the solution themselves. Mark’s been working on it for a while.
September 28, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Just who are the official Google resellers in the UK? I continually get bombarded by companies claiming that they are official Google resellers yet I understand that there are only a handful in the UK, including Thomson Directories, Yell, Reach Local and maybe one or two others.