Canadian performance marketing solutions company Yellow Pages Group (YPG) this morning announced that it has come to an agreement with rival 411 Local Search Corp, under which terms YPG will purchase the 411.ca brand and domain names and acquire an ownership interest in the company to boot.
Simultaneously, the company announced that it has acquired Clear Sky Media, owner of a number of digital coupons and price comparison websites, for an undisclosed sum.
The former agreement will enable YPG to build traffic for its own properties, Canada411.ca and YellowPages.ca, essentially leveraging the brand and growing reach of online directory 411.ca. Under the agreement, 411 Local Search will retain an exclusive license to use the 411.ca trademark until YPG purchases the balance of outstanding shares in the company within approx. three to five years.
In a joint press release, 411.ca is said to have grown to attract close to 10% of online users, generating 13 million queries for local Canadian businesses each month. The addition of the 411.ca site will add approximately one million unduplicated unique visitors to YPG’s network reach, the companies added.
The second acquisition that was announced by YPG this morning is that of Clear Sky Media, a holding company that operates RedFlagDeals and Scarlett Lounge, both community sites centered around discounts and coupons on the web and mobile, as well as price comparison engine PriceCanada.com. RedFlagDeals alone attracts 2.2 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore Media Metrix.
Detailed terms and deal size were not disclosed for either agreement.
That is a nice move by Yellow pages as they have acquired their own rivals and it will help them penetrate into the market more.
This is similar to the ice delivery company purchasing an icebox manufacturer.
If only their market wasn’t being seriously eroded by actual electric refrigerators.
I worked 7 years with a national YP company, and all they were doing was holding on to the old days, and keeping the attitude that “we are the YELLOW PAGES!”
Good luck with that.
Congratulations to Ryan, Derek and the rest of the team at Clear Sky Media. They have built a fantastic community and a bunch of rock solid tools over the years and they deserve to see a great exit like this. I know YPG will get a lot of value out of this acquisition and the addition of some very smart people to their team.
Congrats guys! Another great exit for a Canadian (Toronto) startup.
This does not mention YellowPages’ acquisition of restaurantica.com, as well. That also may not be insignificant.
Any financial details released about this acquisition??
YPG sure is active these days. I’m impressed (compared to what RHD/Idearc/etc are upto in the US).
Buying your competitor is old news and not showing a lot of innovation.
Google’s leading the way in local search, too late for Yellow Pages publishers, the train already left the station.
As a unitholder of Yellow Pages Income Fund, I would like to know both the financial size and terms of this deal. Depending on the actual price paid plus earnouts for a series of websites which mainly consist of message boards cobbled together using cheap Web design templates and open-source technologies, it may well have been cheaper to build and market competitive websites under all-new brand names with better Web technologies and designs.
Cheers,
Doug
I also have a yellow pages unit in my house and reference it when the internet is down from time to time.
Doug, you’re a bank teller, go back to poorly servicing customers and giving incorrect change.
Very funny. A unitholder is the equivalent of a shareholder in a corporation. A unitholder holds units of an income trust that owns a company which pays out its pre-tax profits directly to unitholders thereby avoiding corporate taxes and having the unitholder pay personal income taxes on the trust’s distributions.
As well, I’ve been a technology commentator long before I’ve been a bank customer service rep.
Cheers,
Doug
Yes, because building a site that gets over 2 million unique visitors can be done so easily.
I accept all ideas above