This morning Canada’s Yellow Pages Group took yet another step toward further “diversification” away from its once-core publishing business. The company launched digital agency Mediative. The new firm is a roll up of several others, including SEM stalwart Enquiro:
Concurrent with the launch of Mediative, YPG announced a series of transactions. YPG acquired Enquiro, a leading search engine marketing company, Ad Splash Media, a national retail advertising leader, and UPTREND Media, Canada’s leading independent online advertising representation firm. These companies will be folded into Mediative. YPG also entered into a licensing agreement for Canadian rights to Acquisio’s flagship search, social and display advertising platform. YPG holds a 24% ownership interest in Acquisio Inc. since April, 2009.
The new agency will focus on national advertisers but will also sell into YPG’s now extensive network of consumer properties. Other YP publishers have acquired agencies and SEM firms in the past but this is a more ambitious move to create a full-service agency that extends well beyond traditional YP boundaries and touches every area of digital marketing.
YP is now just a piece of a much larger digital marketing “solution” for YPG. Indeed the new company description is “Canada’s leading performance media and marketing solutions company.”
It’s only a matter of time before “Yellow Pages Group” formally changes its name to “YPG,” dropping the “yellow pages” — not unlike the change from Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing to 3M and International Business Machines to IBM.
October 26th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
As one of YPG’s feet on the street, I see this as an awsome venture for YPG. Very exciting. Talking to SMB’s now is completely different than it was several years ago. YPG has a very compelling story to tell them now. What’s more, SMB’s are sitting up and paying attention now.
October 26th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
YPG has really distinguished itself from most of its publisher peers with its aggressive expansion.
October 26th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
[...] YPG Launches New Mega-Agency ‘Mediative’, screenwerk.com [...]
October 30th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
It’s been awhile since I’ve commented here but I wanted to point out, as both a unitholder of Yellow Pages Income Fund and a user of the Yellow Pages, that YPG has already renamed itself simply Yellow Media. I don’t see them adopting an abbreviation as their moniker. Instead, I could see the parent company of Yellow Media, the one we’re all to be shareholders in post-conversion on Monday, be renamed as Yellow Media Holdings or Yellow Media Company. There is also a problem your blog commenting system that does not allow me to create a new paragraph by using “shift+enter” or even just “enter”. It creates a space instead. Perhaps you could fix that? Please pardon this comment being one big paragraph for that reason. Thanks. -Doug
October 30th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Thanks for the correction on the name change.
December 31st, 2010 at 1:54 pm
[...] Media recently made a big splash by acquiring several digital agencies and combining them into a new entity Mediative. The transformation over the past 18 months of “Yellow Pages Group” into “Yellow [...]
April 1st, 2011 at 10:11 pm
[...] is a extremely bold move by YPG/Yellow Media, after the roll up that created Canadian mega-agency Mediative. It’s also one that is certain to reshape the face of the yellow pages and local search [...]