Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand announced two online partnerships geared toward extending visibility for its advertisers.

The first partnership is with realestate.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online listing site, and the second is with shopnewwzealand.co.nz, the leading online store featuring New Zealand made products.

According to a Scoop Independent News article, the partnerships “are the first in a number of deals which will increase the payback (return on investment) customers receive from advertising on yellow.co.nz. ‘The partnerships involve putting yellow.co.nz search functionality on the partners’ websites, each leaders in their own fields. This has the effect of increasing traffic to yellow.co.nz which will ultimately mean more sales leads for our advertisers,’ ” said Blair Glubb, YPG-NZ’s digital media director.

YPG-NZ has traditionally been quite innovative in its approach to developing the print product, and it appears to be taking a serious look at how best to leverage the online market as well. New Zealand’s Interactive Advertising board, according to Scoop, revealed online advertising increased 67.2 percent to a record NZ$45.9 million during the first quarter of 2008 as compared with the same period a year ago.

With the creation of a Digital Media Group and moving Glubb, its current marketing director, to lead this group signals a concerted effort to maximize the quickly growing online market in New Zealand.