We have a slightly different situation here in Westchester County, NY.
I have had a small display ad in the Verizon books for many years. Costs about $210/month. We have always had the smaller (5x7 inch) local books but I never bothered with them.
A few years ago another publisher decides that they want to give Verizon some competition.
Their book looks very much like the Verizon book both in color and size, so much so that recipients usually can't tell them apart, and this is for a reason. The other part of this strategy is to deliver the books a few weeks before Verizon does. Looks like the reasoning is that they hope the recipient will discard the Verizon book thinking that it is a duplicate From talking to people or looking to see what book they have I find that it does work in many cases.
Now, I have nothing against competion and if they want to get into a p****** match with Verizon, that's fine, just leave me out of it.
My problem is that since these guys came to town the only way to insure that my ad will be available to all the people is if I place an ad in both books. Their rates are a little less than Verizon but I can't afford to spend nearly twice as much for the same ad now because of these guys.
-Hal
Edited to remove name of publisher.
-Hal
[This message has been edited by hbiss (edited 01-16-2005).]
