Monday's NY Times article, New Sources of Online Ad Revenue, plugs into the attention that is getting lavished on the Interactive Yellow Page (IYP) segment. As the IYP sites such as Superpages from Verizon and Switchboard.com have improved their functionality and have started adding contextual ads, the online advertising community has focused its attention on obtaining a share of the advertising dollars spent by local merchants in traditional Yellow Page directories. The Times piece states that "traditional Yellow Pages providers express doubt that local search advertising will take away from their traditional print business revenues." The statement isn't attributed to any particular Yellow Pages executive, most likely because whoever expressed the sentiment was either fooling himself or hiding his true feelings. Print Yellow Pages advertising grew a measly 1% last year and is projected to grow at the slowest rate of any advertising segment in 2004, according to Bob Coen of Universal McCann. Based on the accelerating shift from print to online in total advertising, I think Coen may be too optimistic with respect to print YP advertising growth and that more listing companies will shift their dollars to IYP and other online advertising vehicles. Just as search engine advertising has grown in popularity, due to its measurability and reach, IYP advertising is getting more interesting for all types of merchants who have previously advertised in traditional YP. If 44% of customers are performing more online searches to find local merchants (as the Kelsey Group report quoted in the Times article indicated), then the advertisers had better pay attention and explore online advertising outlets, whether it be IYP or other sites that can effectively match local merchants with interested customers. [See additional commentary on local search in earlier Weblog.]