R.H. Donnelley, Sprint to Sell Las Vegas Ads on InfoSpace.com

R.H. Donnelley Corp. and InfoSpace.com signed an agreement to create and market an Internet yellow pages advertising solution for the Las Vegas market.

R.H. Donnelley will offer businesses that advertise in Sprint’s First Source Yellow Pages directories in Las Vegas the opportunity to expand their reach through InfoSpace.com’s distribution network.

Donnelley is the nation’s largest independent marketer of yellow pages advertising, and InfoSpace.com is a provider of private label solutions for content and commerce to Web sites and Internet appliances.

“People now turn to the Internet for everything from trading stocks to planning a wedding, making Internet advertising a key strategy for all businesses,” said Lyle Wolf, senior vice president for strategic marketing and business development at R.H Donnelley. “Our partnership with InfoSpace.com allows us to offer a highly attractive and strategic Internet advertising solution to businesses in Las Vegas.”

R.H. Donnelley’s multimedia operations in Chesterbrook, PA will manufacture the ads to be included as part of InfoSpace.com’s nationwide directories. Internet advertising will be sold through CenDon, a joint partnership between R.H. Donnelley and Sprint Publishing and Advertising.

“Like R.H. Donnelley, InfoSpace.com is committed to providing an innovative advertising solution that helps give advertisers within the directories an edge in the highly competitive yellow pages environment,” said Naveen Jain, chairman and CEO of InfoSpace.com. “This agreement provides R.H. Donnelley’s growing customer base access to InfoSpace.com’s broad distribution network.”

InfoSpace.com users can find a business by name, location or category. Its directories enable users to view the business’ location on a map, get door-to- door directions and locate similar businesses in the neighborhood.

“R.H. Donnelley’s strategy is to bridge the gap between the Internet and small businesses,” said Wolf. “Donnelley has successfully sold yellow pages advertising on behalf of telephone companies for more than 100 years, and we intend to do the same thing for advertisers on Internet.”

Donnelley currently sells Web sites in New York state through its yellow pages relationship with Bell Atlantic, and in Cincinnati, where RHD publishes its own proprietary yellow pages directory. Donnelley also recently launched a landmark joint venture with China United Telecommunications Corp. to produce yellow pages directories and Internet directory services in the People’s Republic of China via ChinaBiG, a bilingual Internet directory covering China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao.