Printed Phone Books are Passe — AT&T Thinks

Flyer states white pages “available upon request”.

I got an AT&T Austin phone book in the mail the other day. It was addressed to a fresh limited liability firm I recently formed. Never mind that I by now received a couple phone books this year and didn’t request another one.

But a flyer on top of the phone book caught my eye. It basically stated we aren’t sending you a printed white pages (residential) and you ought to access white page listings through an enclosed CD-ROM or online. If I really want a white pages I can request one.

In other words: we know that you don’t really look up people in the white pages, and we don’t make much money from them.

Alas, I still got a printed Yellow Pages. The firm makes a lot of money printing and shipping these things. But if there ever was an admission that even the print yellow pages are on there way out, this is it.

It’s in the interests of the yellow pages industry to keep the print directories going as long as possible. Yellow pages are very profitable. Although print publications also sell online advertising, print ads still sell for more. I believe the reason people are willing to pay more for print ads (not just in phone books) than online is since they can’t measure the results easily. They don’t know that online ads are more economical.

Every time I write regarding the yellow pages, industry stalwarts come out and say the industry is just as good as ever. Baby boomers are entering their peak spending years and still use the phone book.

Maybe, but that’s not a long term value proposition.