Local Search Provider YP Offers All-Inclusive PPC Search Product For SMBs

Local search provider YP has launched a one-stop-shop local PPC solution targeting small and medium businesses. It combines YP’s own PPC-search inventory with paid-search ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The company has been a Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner for years, as well as a Yahoo Bing Network Strategic Ambassador. Now it’s adding its own PPC search inventory to reach consumers across its local search network. The same campaign can run across sites/engines.

YP argues that its users are more valuable because they’re typically closer to buying decisions:

According to a recent comScore study commissioned by YP, people who initiated a search on YP bought more often than other internet searchers and were more influenced by advertising, with 66% having made a purchase after their search and six out of ten (61%) having searched for a business after seeing it featured in an ad.

The same generalization can be made about all local searchers and especially mobile search users, the majority of whom are ready to make a purchase within hours.

The new platform behind YP’s new search offering promises “a new optimization engine [that automates] many of the complex tasks required to build and manage a campaign across multiple search sites at once, the engine takes in performance data across those search sites to manage budgets on a daily basis.”

YP is majority owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital and was previously part of AT&T. The company has roughly half a million local advertisers and well over 4,000 local sales consultants.

Google has developed an extensive network of reseller partners, among them directory publishers and other local traditional media companies.