Yellow Book Begins Full Disclosure of Circulation

UNIONDALE, N.Y. - Yellow Book USA has begun conducting full circulation audits, an industry first, on all Yellow Book directories. The audits are being conducted for Yellow Book by Certified Audit of Circulations (CAC), the highly regarded not-for-profit circulation and research organization founded in 1956.

As the first major yellow pages publisher to audit its circulation figures and disclose those results, Yellow Book will be making widely available circulation numbers for all directories with a circulation over 100,000. Results will be posted over the course of the year for free on the CAC website at www.certifiedaudit.com for all advertisers, publishers, and Certified Marketing Representatives (CMRs), the agencies that handle national accounts in the yellow pages industry. The cost of conducting circulation audits and delivery verification will be borne by Yellow Book at no cost to advertisers or agencies. Yellow Book expects that directories under the 100,000 circulation level will be verified by means of a delivery verification process conducted by a leading independent third party.

“We believe advertisers and CMRs are entitled to transparent, unbiased, third-party audits in order to have faith in the circulation numbers claimed by yellow pages publishers,” said Joe Walsh, president and CEO of Yellow Book USA. “We welcome other major yellow pages publishers to follow our lead in providing this invaluable service to our industry.”

“I applaud Yellow Book for taking a leadership position for auditing its directories and sharing those results with the national advertising community,” said Janice Lucente, marketing manager, Allstate Insurance. “While I appreciate that most major publishers conduct some form of delivery verification, only audited circulation allows an advertiser complete transparency on the number of directories distributed in a particular area. I hope that all publishers will recognize that audited circulation is an extremely important measure of accountability for national advertisers like Allstate.”

Results will provide detailed information at the zip code level proving that the actual number of directories distributed by Yellow Book corresponds to the claimed amount of distribution.

Yellow Book has long advocated, and provided for advertisers and CMRs, a transparent circulation verification process to provide confirmation of the company’s distribution, but has never before posted all the results publicly.

Delivery figures are obtained through telephone verification of a representative sample of households within the delivery scope. For delivery verifications conducted between September 2004 and August 2005 on more than 500 Yellow Book directories, CAC reported that Yellow Book achieved an average delivery confirmation rate of 96%.

“We are pleased Yellow Book has chosen CAC as their independent auditor,” says Mark Stoecklin, CEO of Certified Audit of Circulations. “We believe conducting circulation audits and allowing free access to the data are major steps for the yellow pages industry.”