Google AdWords, meet Verizon’s legion of salesmen. News.com reports that SuperPages.com, Verizon’s yellow pages site, has agreed to become an AdWords reseller, which puts their nigh 200,000 advertisers at Google’s fingertips.
Although Verizon has the manpower to send sales reps out to small businesses hawking off- and online ad space (whereas Google does not), they can’t keep up with businesses’ demand for online ad inventory (whereas Google most certainly can). As Verizon SuperPages.com internet division president Eric Chandler puts it, the deal “marries our sales channel opportunities with Google’s vast advertising network…We are the enablers to get this group” of small merchants “online.”
The race is on for the engines to shore up local advertising bases; it just might have jumped a setting from ‘scramble’ to ‘mad dash.’ SuperPages.com already gives its advertisers access to Google rival MSN’s Local and Virtual Earth products, and the Google arrangement expands their reach to Ask.com and AOL customers – both groups see Google’s AdWords ads. Webpronews points out that Verizon’s nemesis yellowpages.com has had a deal since January to “place its listings on Yahoo’s local search” – and Google’s Verizon deal could cause those walking fingers to break into a run.
Of course, the potential repercussions go beyond the engines and the phone companies. Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker thoughtfully asks, “…will this pose a threat to current search engine marketing businesses?” With Verizon managing its clients’ AdWords accounts, they could conceivably go for the jugular and try to cut SEMs out of the picture. Although Baker cautions that the threat exists, he doesn’t seem to think it’ll happen, saying “…any client leaving a boutique search marketing shop for Ma Bell would be insane…” – very well put indeed.
My site is not crawling with google.