Meeting Yellow Pages Group chief executive Bruce Cotterill today, one of my first questions was: can yellow.co.nz every match Yellow Pages’ print editions in scale?

Read also: Yellow clocks $338m loss

After all, although Yellow’s digital revenue zoomed ahead 43.9% this year to $29 million, it’s still a modest 9.5% of the directory company’s total take.

When will online catch up?

Can it ever?

After all, in some industries such as publishing (which as a former ACP Media MD Mr Cotterill is familiar) the economics of online have proved brutal, with the web only yielding around 10% the advertising revenue as a company could expect for a similar size print audience.

“I think it’s a long way off. It’ll be five to 10 years before I can see parity,” said Mr Cotterill.

In some European countries, directory operators have practically turned their backs on print, throwing all their resources at online said Mr Cotterill.

But in many of those markets - many of which enjoy cheaper and better broadband - 60% of business is still coming from print, maintained the Yellow boss.

Mr Cotterill is unmoved by reports of hardcopy directories piling up in office corners.

Research commissioned by his company found that 1.5 million people pick up the Yellow Pages each week, and 1.6 million the White Pages.

Print, he says, is here for the long haul. Yellow’s modus operandi is that print will remain stable (in 2009 financial year revenue fell 1.6%; an impressive result relative to other media), while online will provide growth.

Real growth in mobile
"Within the digital division, ultimately the web will be just the stepping stone to mobile, where the real growth could come,"  said Mr Cotterill (Yellow already has a basic iPhone app, with location-awareness).

Of course, with both PC-based browsers and mobile, most people now head to Google rather than Yellow.co.nz (or any specific directory site) to begin their search for a builder, pizza or hair dresser.

But here, Mr Cotterill has proved canny.

A data-sharing alliance with Google, plus more overt strategies like website optimisation and buying Google ad words, means that around one third of Google searches for a good or service turn up a Yellow.co.nz listing.

In the same way that Google News feeds newspaper and magazine sites, general Google searches are feeding Yellow.

FY2009 also saw Google Maps start to overlay business data drawn from Yellow’s Finda subsidiary (bought from APN in March), which holds listing information on 200,000 New Zealand businesses.

What’s in store for the 2010 financial year: more competition with Google, or more co-operation?

More co-operation, said Mr Cotterill (naturally).

The trick, as publishers have found, is not to let Google’s meagre nourishment distract you as it slowly squeezes you to death.