Seat PG Brings Over 60,000 Italian SMEs onto the Web in 2010

To encourage the presence of Italian small and medium-sized enterprises on the Internet, Seat PG has launched a multimedia offering that in a mere 12 months has met with the participation of 100,000 companies and
for 60,000 of these it created a customized website.

Turin, 15 December, 2010 – Seat PG confirms its role as a local marketing communication agency, by announcing the sale in only 12 months of over 100 thousand multimedia packages. The multimedia packages are part of a strategy of integrating the available platforms (print-voice-online) aimed at ensuring Italian enterprises enjoy cross-media visibility and a greater Internet presence. Over 60,000 of the 100,000 companies that have participated in the initiative will have a customized website created by Seat.

"In Italy, nearly two companies out of three do not have their own websites. This is why in late 2009 we bet on packages aimed at encouraging entry to the Web in a simple manner and without large investments. Over the past 12 months, we have seen strong enthusiasm and growing interest by our customers, leading to a result that exceeded our expectations: 100,000 packages sold," explained Alberto Cappellini, Chief Executive Officer of Seat PG. "We are certain that small entrepreneurs are also ready for the Internet challenge and we are committed to supporting them in their growth on this platform, which stills presents considerable margins for development".

From a geographical standpoint, the response from large metropolitan areas was highly dynamic: Milan, Rome, Turin and Naples alone represent nearly 17% of the total packages sold. They are followed by the provinces of Veneto (Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Venice and Verona), which together were responsible for 11% of acceptances. Florence alone yielded 3% (approximately 2,310 enterprises), followed by Forlì with 2.7% and Bari, Bologna and Palermo with approximately 2% of the total.

"While on the one hand we note that the large centres and industrialised territories respond dynamically to the offering of visibility on the Web platform, on the other we can only emphasise that an Internet presence remains a less widespread achievement than one might believe, even in central, developed areas such as those considered", concluded Alberto Cappellini.

In the first nine months of 2010, Seat PG — which recently became the world's first directory company to launch an e-commerce service devoted to SMEs — reported a sharp acceleration in online revenue, which rose 56%, owing primarily to the contribution of the sale of multimedia packages and the development of online marketing services. This new strategy allowed Seat PG to accelerate the process of evolution of the revenue mix, with an increase of online revenues to 28.9% from 17.2% in the first nine months of 2009.

SEAT PG
Today, Seat PG is a local marketing communication agency with deep roots in Italy, which it serves through a network of 180 multimedia agencies – the Web Points.
In addition to traditional visibility services, which offer detailed information and sophisticated search tools to tens of millions of users and a wide range of multi-platform ("print-voice-online-mobile") advertising media to advertisers via an extensive multimedia platform, Seat PG also provides innovative Web marketing services including Web design, multimedia content creation, Web visibility activities and a wide array of complementary advertising communication instruments. Over the last year, it has designed approximately 100,000 websites, ranking as Italy’s number-one agency.
Seat PG serves as a local communication and marketing partner for Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs), large companies that operate within the country and central and local government. By leveraging the efficacy and dissemination of its products and services, Seat PG brings supply and demand together, registering approximately three billion views of its media each year and helping complete transactions that represent nearly 10% of Italy’s’ GDP.
SEAT Pagine Gialle has been engaged in information services and search and communications tools for over 80 years. It is a success story based on a brand that is familiar to everyone, a sales network employing over 2,000 persons, a technology and a product range in constant evolution and a database that includes 13 million households and 4 million businesses (2009 data), and a wide range of products guaranteeing a real integrated system of communications to about 500,000 Italian Customers: a total of 53 million volumes (PagineGialle, PagineBianche, Tuttocittà) distributed to the homes and offices (2009 data), about 29 million enquiries through the directory assistance service (89.24.24 ProntoPagineGialle and 12.40 ProntoPagineBianche, 2009 data), and about 323 million hits on online directories (www.paginegialle.it, www.paginebianche.it, www.tuttocitta.it, 2009 data) connect people and businesses, bringing together needs and solutions and promoting economic exchanges.

Press contacts:     

SEAT PG
Communications Department
comunicazione.stampa@seat.it  
Tel. +39 011.435.2281

Burson-Marsteller
Antonella Violante - Alessia Quaglio
antonella.violante@bm.com
alessia.quaglio@bm.com  
Tel. +39.02.721431

Barabino & Partners:
Federico Vercellino
f.vercellino@barabino.it
Tel.+39 02 72.02.35.35 –
Mobile +39 331. 57.45.171