Are the Telephone Directories Starting to Fall to the World of Online Advertising?
Online Motor Insurance Revolution
In the not so distant past the telephone directory stood head and shoulders above all advertising media and one of the most prominent marketing sections in the directory was the motor insurance industry. In fact the insurance section within these mammoth directories was so vast many would comment on it being more of an insurance and financial resource than anything else.
Having worked closely with telephone directories from within the motor insurance industry I have watched at first hand how, the concentration of advertising of general and niche motor insurance products are slowly being diminished from paper advertising toward the new online entity of the internet.
The once supreme media of paper advertising is now falling to the new kid on the block. The web has developed at such speed that people are still quite oblivious to its massive marketing potential. The major influence on the motor insurance industry has without a doubt been the ability to quote online, buy online and promote ones company through bespoke websites and through the new giants of media, the price comparison companies and this has had a massive impact on traditional paper advertising such as the telephone directories.
Two elements have clearly seen reduction on the use of the telephone directory as a media advertising source, price and readership. Advertising motor insurance in telephone directories became ridiculously expensive but when things got tough and better deals where introduced it was simply too late, readership was already being affected.
Some of the telephone directories had also resorted to white labelling themselves in their own advertising pages in order to capture the element of selling phone calls onto a car insurance market place eager to capture as much traffic as they can get, however with readership diminishing this is no real solution to the problem, if people choose not to read through the directory then there is simply no audience to attract.
The simple reality is, the market place has moved onto the virtual world of the internet and with sales of computers increasing year on year it is not likely that readership of the paper directories will ever return. It appears that many of the big names in telephone directories do appreciate this and they do have their own online versions of the directories but they are years behind some of the established online directories so catching up might just prove to be an impossible task.
As a major user of the telephone directory for some years to promote motor insurance cover we stopped using the same over a year ago in conjunction with a number of other users, the question now is, can the major telephone directories survive this trend.