RH Donnelley Exits Bankruptcy as Dex One Corp.

R.H. Donnelley has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as Dex One Corp., having shed about $6.4 billion in debt and $500 million in annual interest payments, reports BtoB.

Dex One Corp. distributes its Dex-branded Yellow Pages and white pages directories in more than 600 markets, and also runs the local search engine Dexknows.com. The company also runs mobile search services.

YP Publishers Struggle, but Face Brighter Future

2009 was a challenging year for some Yellow Pages directory publishers, but the industry is entering 2010 with “fresh optimism,” according to Neg Norton, president of the Yellow Pages Association (YPA), who said recently that small businesses are beginning to show signs of recovery and growth. At the same time, publishers are diversifying their business models to incorporate more online offerings and more interactive capabilities.

Mobile is expected to drive local search growth in 2010. Last year, BIA/Kelsey predicted that mobile local search ad revenues will grow to $130 million by 2013, and that mobile local searches will increase to 35% of all searches by 2013. Amid this growth, the Yellow Pages industry is seeing significant innovation on the mobile front, from new Yellow Pages iPhone apps to mapping technologies that deliver relevant local information to users on the go.

Local print advertising is expected to decline but not totally disappear: Though many industry watchers have been predicting the death of print media for a long time, Norton doesn’t think it will disappear anytime soon. Instead, he points to the fact that usage is changing. Media fragmentation is causing a gradual decline in the quantity of print Yellow Pages references, for example, although the quality of those references is still very high. Norton added that the “perception of usage decline in the printed Yellow Pages far exceeds the reality of what is actually happening.”