TKG’s recently completed Global Yellow Pages and Local Search Forecast underpinned most of the discussion at last week’s Local Online Media: London 08. Today it launches officially.

Each year the forecast measures the size of the local search industry and applies the most current analysis of trends to project growth of key segments. These have included the transition of revenues to digital ad products at both search engines and online directories. This year we have expanded the forecast globally and sized the search, display, classifieds and other relevant interactive ad products by market.

While most of the data are reserved for TKG subscribers, there are some takeaways in the publicly available high level figures. Here are a few:

On the online side:

The global advertising market will grow from US$605billion in 2007 to US$707 billion in 2012, a 2.7 percent CAGR.

Over that time period, global interactive advertising will grow from US$45 billion to US$147 billion, a CAGR of 23.4 percent.

At year-end 2007, the interactive ad market constituted 7.4 percent of the global ad market, up from 6.1 percent at year-end 2006.

By 2012 the interactive share of global ad spend will reach 21 percent.

In 2007 the global directional media industry grew 3.6 percent to US$33 billion.

On the print and Internet Yellow Pages side:

Print directories declined 0.6 percent for the year to US$27.5 billion.

TKG’s long-term outlook for print directories has softened considerably since last year’s forecast. TKG expects print revenues to decline globally at a CAGR of 1.4 percent from 2007 to 2012, totaling US$25.6 billion in 2012.

The outlook for print varies considerably by market. In the Nordic markets, for example, the migration from print to online is well under way, while in Canada, print revenues are expected to continue growing for the forecast period, albeit at a modest rate.

Internet Yellow Pages totaled US$3.7 billion in 2007, a 28 percent increase, and local search reached US$2.1 billion, up 34 percent for the year.

By 2012 TKG expects IYP and local search combined to total US$15.8 billion, or 38 percent of global directional media revenues.