DA conference last week

Last week I was at Pelorus conference (http://www.pelorus-group.com/). Several presenters presented their businesses and business models for 411 and local search.

Key takeaways from the show were
1. FREE/Advertising supported business models for 411 are gaining traction and market share
2. Its unclear if the overall DA market is growing because of Free DA services OR if the Free services are taking market share from paid-DA services.
3. Lots of companies presented how they do a better job at targeting and monetizing ads for dial in free DA services.
4. 800-FREE-411 showed their continued growth (now more than 20 million calls a month). The company's founder, Scott, shared cost per call and advertising $ made per call. Company expects to break even in the next 4-6 months. When they do, that would prove FREE DA services are real and are not going away. That also implies that carriers need to start thinking how to continue to monetize the 411 market for their customers.
5. Some of the carriers are saying: they dont care about free DA services, if those become a threat, they can essentially block the phone numbers Or application. Carriers are successfully blocking the applications BUT blocking phone numbers is not going to be easy, Some of you may be aware of the recent case involving FreeConference.com, where AT&T was blocking its numbers, they went to court and AT&T had to unblock the numbers.


We believe in a future where both paid and free services exist. Both will have different value propositions. Let’s see how this pans out.