IAR: Switchboard Rolls Out Paid Link Program
As if the search engine marketer's job wasn't hard enough, managing thousands of listings across paid search venues, the Internet yellow pages and directory sites are getting into the act.
Brian Morrissey reports that Switchboard.com is rolling out its own paid links program sold by internal staff that "allows advertisers to purchase transactional links on their listings." Sounds familiar.
The questions when exploring the power of local listings are flexibility (long term contracts vs. short term), pricing (CPM, CPC or monthly fixed cost per category), creative (do you need to think about new creative units) and, of course, return on investment.
Of course, Verizon's Superpages, and Yahoo Yellow Pages also already sell listings within directory results. The topic seems to have some momentum behind it. For those interested in exploring it more, there will be a conference devoted to Digital Directories & Local Interactive Media on October 23rd, in Alexandria, VA.
