WhitePages.com A Good Week in Ad Sales

Hi, my name is Erik Ricard and I am an Account Executive on the Ad Sales team. I have been with the company for almost two years, but I am a new contributor to the company blog.

Last week was a good one. The sun was shining, I closed my first deal since recently switching to the Chicago territory and, for anyone who was trapped under a rock, CBS acquired CNET for $1.8 billion. The way I look at it, this is fantastic news for our industry and our company. This is a pretty impressive vote of confidence in the opportunities (aka potential ad revenue) that online media can deliver. On top of that interesting news, the Daily Online Examiner reported a 26% jump in online ad spending from 2006 to 2007. And the experts agree the trend is likely to continue this year. The head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attributes continued growth to “explosive innovation in the industry…providing marketers with new and unique ways to reach consumers.” And that really made my day because all signs around here show that we’re part of that “explosive innovation” that the IAB is talking about. The efforts by the team to increase our Demo inventory, enhance our behavior targeting, and open up our site to our users so that they can control their listings are all going to help us deliver those new and unique ways for our advertisers to reach consumers. Let’s hope this week will be as good as last week!