Not only has the Chronicle purchased online rights to the Yellow Pages and combined those listings with its own classified advertising database. It also is aggressively telemarketing ads in the new online directory as a part of an indivisible package that features its traditional print classifieds as its cornerstone. The package is not the traditional one, asking advertisers to pay a few dollars more to upgrade a print ad to an online ad. The plan, according to Chronicle managers who drafted it, is targeted not so much at creating an online site as it is at increasing print classified lineage by expanding print to include infrequently changing, directory-style listings for companies never previously served professional practitioners, service organizations and the like. Online is but an inducement in this effort.
Online classifieds reach less than one-tenth the potential market that print classifieds reach.
As Chronicle managers explain, online classifieds should not be thought of as a threat to lure advertisers away from print but rather as an opportunity to serve new advertisers in print as well as online. They strongly counsel against alliances with pricey online classified networks and against the purchase of proprietary classified software, which they describe as relatively simple to produce on your own. Rather than bow to the sales pitches of people trying to force publishers to purchase software or join alliances lest they be left behind by the online revolution, the Chronicle counsels publishers to use those same pitches on their clients to sell them regular print advertising, with online as the inducement.