AT&T Inc., the owner of Yellowpages.com, has realigned its advertising sales and product responsibilities under two new business units in a move to help streamline its advertising opportunities across its various channels.
Under the new alignment, AT&T’s Advertising & Publishing business unit has been renamed AT&T Advertising Solutions and is responsible for all AT&T advertising sales.
In addition, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com business unit has been renamed AT&T Interactive, as the unit expands its services to cover the development and management of online and mobile advertising products across all of AT&T’s media platforms.
“Advertising is a big business for AT&T, and the reorganization puts us in a better position to sell advertising,” said Matt Crowley, CMO at AT&T Interactive. “It furthers our ability to provide a uniform face to the advertising community, and it gives a network approach to advertisers.”
Prior to the restructuring, ad sales, product development and delivery were served in multiple business units. The new advertising organization structure is based around the brand’s core focus in local search and technology. Existing Yellowpages.com products that will be pushed include featured business listings, mobile distribution, search engine marketing, online video ads and The Real Yellow Pages.
AT&T has 14.8 million broadband customers and 74.9 million wireless customers. AT&T Interactive Network ranked No. 17 of the top Web properties in the US in October, according to research by ComScore.
“We took this opportunity to step back and look globally about what we wanted to offer,” added Crowley. “Also, we wanted to make it more efficient for advertisers to purchase impression across all of our properties.”
Under the new structuring, AT&T advertising sales including The Real Yellow Pages, Yellowpages.com, AT&T U-verseSM TV and other digital ad products that are developed, managed and delivered by AT&T Interactive. The department will be headed up by AT&T Advertising Solutions, led by president and CEO Frank Jules.
AT&T Interactive will be run by president/CEO David Krantz, who will be tasked with growing its flagship Yellowpages.com local search platform. The platform can be accessed by consumers via the Web, mobile and through its own interactive channel on AT&T U-verse TV. Ads purchased for AT&T Interactive will run across these channels.
Yellowpages.com ads will still run across Microsoft MSN Yellowpages and AOL Yellowpages, due to the existing distribution agreement. According to AT&T, Yellowpages.com’s average monthly unique visitors have grown 38% from Q3 2007 to Q3 2008. In addition, 55% of people who visit Yellowpages.com make a purchase from a sponsored business.
“Yellowpages.com offers advertisers the opportunity to purchase very targeted ads, because consumers that are searchingour listings are motivated buyers,” Crowley said.
