February 24, 2004

Revenue from paid-search ads, which are generated by keyword search terms, have boomed in recent years as advertisers have found them to be a successful way to connect with consumers who are in a buying mood.

Verizon Communications next week will relaunch its SuperPages.com site to give advertisers the option of signing up for lucrative Web-search ad campaigns, the No. 1 U.S. telephone company said on Tuesday.

Verizon will release the new service for its online Yellow Pages on March 1 with partner and paid-search advertising provider FindWhat.com.

The new SuperPages.com arrives as publishers of print Yellow Pages and newspapers seek to protect their billion-dollar local advertising businesses from future rivals like Web-search giant Google Inc. and Internet portals Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

All of those companies now eyeing local advertisers as potential users of the highly targeted pay-per-click ad services they offer through their Web sites and have emerged as potential rivals to traditional print publications, analysts have said.

"We're adding pay-per-click for national and local advertisers to take advantage of that model," Lester Chu, a Verizon vice president, told Reuters.

The majority of paid-search revenue traditionally has come from marketers selling goods to a predominantly national audience.

As AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet division seek new paid-search revenue opportunities, each has launched local search projects, said Greg Sterling, a program director at the Kelsey Group, which estimates that print Yellow Pages are a $15 billion business in the United States.

"There is a lot at stake in this industry: what Verizon has done is a bold move," Sterling said.

Source: Yahoo News

        

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