This web site may help those who offer web hosting services:
www.HostDirs.com

As for my marketing knowledge, I would NOT go with TopHosts.com, HostSearch.com and all those "TOP ELITE GUYS" for a few reasons:

- they are extremely over-valued (even though they get most of the traffic)
- to run an ad-campaign on them is inefficient in terms of ROI. One a few day campaign could cost up to $2000 on TopHosts.com.

So if you'd really like to get your message up ona web hosting directory, go with the medium-sized directories. They get all the same visitors as TopHosts.com and their ROI could be higher. Also, those $2000 could be well spent on 5 directories instead of one. (This will take care of the branding effect as well - having your name out there on five web sites).

Hope this helps,