December 14, 2007

SEW Experts: Local Search Lead Gen: Yellowpages.com Ingenio-us Strategy

Late last month, AT&T purchased pay-per-call search platform and advertising network Ingenio. In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Local Search Lead Gen: Yellowpages.com Ingenio-us Strategy," local search expert Michael Boland discusses what this means for AT&T Yellow Pages and, more importantly, Yellowpages.com, its Internet yellow pages (IYP) counterpart.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 19, 2007

AT&T To Acquire Pay Per Call Company Ingenio

AT&T announced plans to acquire Ingenio whose Pay Per Call technology they intend to integrate with YellowPages.com, according to the company press release.

"AT&T plans to integrate Ingenio's Pay Per Call solutions into its directory service and local search advertising portfolio, including the YELLOWPAGES.COM Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. Ingenio's Pay Per Call service is an advertising platform that allows businesses to manage their ad programs and generate valuable phone leads. The platform uses proprietary technology to provision unique published phone numbers to track calls to businesses generated by those ads, and advertisers' fees are based on the volume of these leads," the release stated.

Interesting play into the space, and a smart forward move on the part of the local directories. The use of online information sources for local searches previously done with Yellow Books and 411 calls is on the rise and the old major players need to adapt to this change.

Just how effectively they use the technology will be the test.

"Throughout the past few years, we have built and deployed innovative products that help the services economy flourish online," said Mark Britto, president and CEO of Ingenio. "What we have lacked, however, is scale -- the ability to bring those solutions to the market in the biggest possible way. Our merger with AT&T allows us to bring our innovations to more businesses nationwide."

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:58 PM | Permalink

August 9, 2007

Marchex to Acquire Pay-per-Call Provider

Marchex announced plans to acquire pay-per-call provider VoiceStar, which it hopes to use to bring call-based ad services to its direct-navigation network.

In June, Marchex launched more than 100,000 local and vertical Web sites, each with unique content that includes yellow pages listings, user-generated and expert ratings and reviews, and of course plenty of ads from Marchex's ad network.

"We have distribution. That's half of it," Marchex Chief Strategy Officer Peter Christothoulou told ClickZ. The platform is ready to integrate pay-per-call with its dashboard and offer local marketers the option to pay for online leads resulting in a phone call, which many small businesses find more valuable, he said.

The deal is reportedly worth $20 million, plus $8 million in additional investments through 2008.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 6:08 PM | Permalink

March 19, 2007

Ingenio and Medio Developing Pay Per Call Mobile Search

Ingenio and Medio announced a partnership to develop Pay Per Call for the mobile market in a press release today.

"Mobile search is a unique advertising platform where advertisers can reach consumers who are actively looking for their services and ready to transact at that moment," said Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Officer for Medio Systems. "Pay Per Call is aligned with our vision because it surfaces specific content — in this case, the phone number of a relevant merchant, like a taxi or locksmith service — and gives the mobile consumer immediate access to that advertiser with a click of a button, no cell-phone Web surfing required."

"Today's announcement builds on Ingenio's momentum in the mobile space, and demonstrates how effective the Pay Per Call ad model is at both enabling and monetizing mobile search," said Marc Barach, chief marketing officer, Ingenio. "Recent studies have shown that the most valuable ads are those that are highly targeted to a consumer's real-time needs. Search-based ad models like Pay Per Call capitalize on this by showcasing advertisers as relevant, local content."

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:06 AM | Permalink

December 11, 2006

Ingenio Grows its Mobile Pay-per-Call Network

Pay-per-call provider Ingenio has added JumpTap, the mobile search provider behind Alltel and other carriers, to its ad network. It now has five mobile partners, including AOL and Microsoft.

According to Ingenio's CMO, the nature of mobile searches on its network has been changing from at-hand or impulse searches for things like taxis, restaurants or flowers, a quarter of mobile searches are now made in more "considered purchase" categories, like financial services, travel, or cable and satellite TV.

That creates new opportunities for search marketers, as long as they understand what a call is worth to a client. Keywords for those "considered" categories tend to fetch a higher price in Ingenio's auction, as much as $6 to $30 per call compared to a $2 to $4 range for impulse buys.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:34 PM | Permalink

October 9, 2006

Windows Live Search Mobile PPCall Deal With Ingenio

A few weeks ago Google introduced sponsored listings into mobile search. Yahoo followed last week. Now Microsoft has partnered with Ingenio to deliver pay-per-call listings into Windows Live Search for mobile. But unlike the other two programs this is not being launched in beta.

Ingenio's advertisers are the only paid listings that will appear when users conduct a geotargeted search on Window Live for mobile. There will only be one advertiser shown for any given search and Ingenio's entire inventory will be funneled into Windows Live. When there are no relevant Ingenio advertisers, no sponsored listings will appear. (The company has existing mobile distribution through Jingle Networks' 1800-Free-411 and go2.)

Since Ingenio announced its original deal with AOL (see example) more than a year ago it has been steadily building distribution with smaller players in the local market. This is obviously a very significant relationship and may be a prelude to a broader deal with Microsoft. Ingenio wouldn't comment on that possibility, however.

Microsoft currently offers "call for free" click-to-call functionality on Live Local.

All three of the dominant search providers have now flipped the switch on sponsored listings in mobile. We should see a continuing acceleration of product development and competition in the wireless space. Early evidence argues that response rates (clicks/calls) in a wireless environment will be much higher than clicks on sponsored listings online because there are fewer competing advertisers (due to smaller screens) and users' needs are typically more immediate.

While the number of users conducting searches in a mobile environment is currently a very tiny fraction of what it is online, mobile search will be a significant channel in the next several years as the user experience improves.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 8:45 AM | Permalink

September 5, 2006

Google's Click To Call In UK

I reported yesterday that Google seems to have launched Click To Call in the UK. A search on jet2 should bring back an ad from Directline Holidays with a green phone, clicking on the phone will allow you to enter your phone number for a call back from that advertiser. Click to call was launched by Google in the US in February 2006. I have screen captures and more details at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:34 AM | Permalink

August 28, 2006

EBay-Google PPCall Deal: More Than Meets The Eye

Barry posted earlier about the reported Google-eBay AdSense and "Click to Call" deal. The press stories were somewhat vague and incorrectly implied all elements of the deal to be international only. I subsequently got some clarity from Skype on the implementation. The big deal here is that this is PPCall coming to both Skype/eBay and Google in a potentially big way.

The "Click to Call"/PPCall piece of the deal is U.S. only, to be implemented in mid '07. It will then go international after that. Google and Skype are opening up both of their voice clients to PPCall -- it's really about accelerating adoption of PPCall. Whether there will be cross-distribution of advertisers remains to be determined, but I would assume yes eventually.

Here's a longer post on specifics of the PPCall piece of the deal on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 12:40 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

Windows Live Local Integrates 'Call For Free' Into All Business Listings

The intrepid Gary Price called my attention to the quiet integration of "click to call" functionality into Windows Live Local over the weekend. I couldn't determine whether this was homegrown or whether Microsoft was working with a partner such as eStara or Ingenio to offer the service.

Consumers can click a "call for free" link that appears next to listings. That in turn launches a pop-up window requesting the user's phone number. After the user inputs her number a call is connected with the listed business. Here's a category search for "Hotels, New York" showing the call for free links.

The system will also remember your number so it truly becomes "click to call" the next time you use it. Google was testing a similar system on AdWords months ago, but not on Maps/Local. Now those ads are nowhere in evidence. (There was some anecdotal information at the last SES New York that the Google product was performing fairly well for a couple of advertisers I spoke to.)

YellowPages.com also offers this capability (from Ingenio), but not for every listing. It's an advertiser-only product. Amazon's A9 Yellow Pages offers click to call across the board for all listings (through a partnership with eStara). On A9/Amazon, click to call is not currently monetized to our knowledge.

People often confuse "click to call" (call completion/connection) with "pay per phone call" (an ad model). They may overlap, but they're not synonymous. Microsoft has not introduced pay per phone call. But any click to call infrastructure lays the groundwork for potential pay per phone call advertising scenarios later.

There's real consumer convenience here, especially after the user's phone number is remembered, taking some of the potential friction out of the process of contacting local businesses. And while this offering isn't the first in the market, Microsoft's two chief rivals don't currently offer this capability in their local products. It's not a "must have" but rather a "nice to have" capability at the moment.

Let's see if consumers connect with this.

Postscript from Danny: The call functionality might be from Microsoft's acquisition of Teleo, which we covered here: Microsoft Acquisition To Lead To Pay-Per-Call Ads?

Postscript Number Two from Greg: Local stalwart Citysearch reminds us that the site also offers a service (in selected cases) called "Click2Talk," powered by a company called CIRXIT.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 6:24 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2006

Pay-Per-Call Looking For Ways To Grow

The pay-per-call industry has a number of folks that assumed far faster growth than what has realized to date. Pay-Per-Call Struggles to Prove Worth in Internet Ad Realm from E-Commerce Times looks at the latest in the space, how the companies that offer pay-per-call advertising are posturing and making deals with mobile search service providers to expand inventory.

Search users are also slow to adopt mobile search, although acceptance of mobile, especially with local mobile search for travelers, is probably a mere matter of time and excellent small screen device options. Pay-per-call advertising networks hooking up with mobile search providers makes a lot of sense, since the small screen device people will likely be holding will be a phone.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 10:28 AM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

MIVA Seeing PPCall Monetization Growth

One of the most interesting elements of the announced eBay-Yahoo! “alliance” today is the potential for “click to call” and “pay per phone call” (PPCall). These are two distinct things: click to call is a VoIP-based calling infrastructure and PPCall is a billing or ad model. They’re related but one doesn’t always mean the other. However, in the case of portals and search engines “testing click to call” usually means “we’re thinking about PPCall.”

They obviously want to make money from calls; MIVA (though a partnership with Ingenio) appears to be doing so. Earlier this month the company reported that in its UK market the company was seeing bids for calls as high as £35 ($65.53). It didn’t identify the category or categories in which these high bids were appearing, but they’re probably professional services categories (realtors, mortgage brokers, lawyers, etc.).

A couple of people have recently remarked to me that PPCall revenues have failed to materialize. The market is very much still in an early adoption phase. Click to call icons and phone numbers need to be more widely disseminated and the consumer behavior needs to be established before advertisers will show up in droves. (Small business adoption is a complicated "sidebar" to this discussion.)

Tracking phone calls (via 800 numbers or click to call), whether it?s monetized or not, helps marketers ?close the loop? with offline consumer purchase behavior. Marketers are often blind regarding how their online campaigns are actually influencing consumer behavior. If the marketer fulfills offline or the transaction happens offline tracking often isn?t there.

Calls aren?t a panacea for that problem ? what about the consumer who consults an online map to find a store location and doesn?t make a phone call? ? but they help provide greater visibility on the impact of online marketing on offline consumer transactions.

While at The Kelsey Group, I helped develop the original PPCall forecast that one sees quoted. That was a complicated process and heavily qualified by things like how and whether the big ad networks would push PPCall to the marketplace and how quickly. We have still yet to see any real implementation of PPCall on a major portal or engine beyond AOL?s deal with Ingenio. However, Google, Yahoo and MSN are all flirting with and/or actively testing systems out.

MIVA is building/rebuilding an advertiser network in its new incarnation as a full-service (consumer search, monetization, ad distribution), independent partner for publishers. It was first to market with PPCall in the US and Europe and it seems like the company is starting to gain traction with the product. (An interesting sidelight to this is MIVA's "pay per text" SMS product in the UK.)

Internet time is like ?dog years? (7x human years). And those are the accelerated expectations everyone brings to new initiatives. If there isn?t a ton of revenue in a very compressed time frame it must be a failure, right? PPCall and the local market more generally -- PPCall is partly about local though not entirely -- will continue to take time to develop.

The PPClick empire wasn?t built in a day. It took about eight or 10 years, depending on how you count it, to really develop massive revenues. Craigslist took a decade to become the classifieds juggernaut it is today. PPCall has really been around for about two and a half years.

Calls are important to the future of online advertising for many reasons. Just give it a little more time.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:57 AM | Permalink

March 14, 2006

MSN To Launch Click to Call Soon?

MarketingVox reports on a BusinessWeek article that shows signs that Microsoft will launch a click to call service within its search engine. The article suggests that Microsoft will launch the service this week and it allow “users connect to businesses via web-based calls by clicking on MSN search links." I would assume this will be integrated into MSN AdCenter but it is possible they use a third-party PPC engine for the feature.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:43 AM | Permalink

February 13, 2006

AdWords Adds Click to Call Feature to Ads

Seth Godin found a feature I have never seen before at AdWords. Do a search on Artisan Hotel at Google and look at the ads without URLs. The ads have a little phone icon on the right hand side of the link. Click on the ad and you get a AJAX pop up that asks you for your phone number. Google calls this click to call and Gary has reported on this back in November of 2005. It seems like this is the first time the test can be seen by a wide audience.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 PM | Permalink

February 1, 2006

Click-to-Call Advertising: VoIP Inc. Announces Deal with Google

The News.com article: Google calls upon VoIP, reports that Google has signed a deal with VoiceOne to provide VoIP services for Google's click-to-call advertising service. Actually, VoiceOne and their parent company, VoIP Inc. have been working with Google since September.

VoIP CTO [Shawn] Lewis said he believes that the contract expires in two years and that he could not provide further details because of a nondisclosure agreement. "We are working with VoIP, Inc. on a click-to-call advertising test which we began late last year," a Google spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to questions. "We have no further details to share at this time."

The article also points out that an SEC document filed on Monday shows that the two companies entered into an agreement on Sept. 1, 2005 and now have a "direct peering" relationship that allows their IP networks (Google and VoIP) to exchange data.

The full text of the SEC document is available here.

Google began testing its click-to-call program in November.

Om Malik has more on the deal and VoIP Inc. in this post.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:15 AM | Permalink

January 19, 2006

Pay-Per-Call Needs Local Advertisers to Be Successful

A new Clickz column by Phil Stelter: Local Opportunity Is Calling, offers an excellent look at the meeting of local advertising and pay-per-call advertising. He believes that local is what will "determine" pay-per-calls "fate." For those not up-to-speed on the topic, Stelter's column will also serves as a good overview on the topic.

Numbers Stelter also shares some stats via The Kelsey Group.

• Kelsey estimates 350,000 companies participate in PPC
• Nearly 7 million companies advertise in the Yellow Pages

The Future Phil goes on to list what he believes are several "essential" elements that must be in place for pay-per-call to succeed including, "a model local advertisers and agencies are prepared to adopt" and "a user interface or method that online shoppers are prepared to use." He argues that no one, to this point, has put all of these and other elements together

Players The article includes list and links to key players and initiatives in the pay-per-call space.

Differences What I found most useful is the section where the differences between pay-per-call and similar types of services like click-to-call are explained.

Finally, Stelter suggests taking a look at this new Clickz article: Why Pay-Per-Call Advertising Needs Ad Agencies, where Hollis offers a list of pay-per-call best practices along with a Kelsey Group Report that's summarized in this Clickz article from last June

Kudos to both Phil and Hollis on writing two interesting and very useful columns.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:50 PM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Google's Patent Application for Click-to-Call Advertising Published

A newly published patent application (first filed on June 30, 2004) shows that Google is looking to patent a method to provide click-to-call advertising on mobile phones. Kevin Newcomb's story: Google Looks to Patent Mobile Click-to-call Ads, offers a overview of the app and comments from Kelsey Group's, Greg Sterling.

Google is keeping its plans quiet, providing a statement saying only, "Like many companies, we file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees may come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications."

The application sets forth a method of scoring ads based on the various limitations of a client device, relevance of ads to users -- both contextual and behavioral -- CPM and CPC price, user preferences, and other "performance parameters." The score would determine which ad or ads to serve, as well as whether to link the user to a Web page or connect to an advertiser via phone call.

"Everybody talks about pay-per-call in wireless as a natural business model," Greg Sterling, program director at the Kelsey Group, told ClickZ News." There's definitely a lot of interest among advertisers in receiving phone calls. Our data indicate that 71 percent of small and mid-sized businesses would rather receive a phone call than a click in a performance-based ad model."

The complete patent application can be found here.

Google wasn't the only search provider having patent apps published last week. In this post, I link to seven newly published "search related" patent apps from Microsoft.

Postscript From Danny: As a reminder, Google has already been testing click to call ads, as covered here, Google Begins Test of "Click-to-Call" Advertising Program

Posted by Gary Price at 12:53 PM | Permalink

December 7, 2005

Click to Call Pilot Project Begins in Australia

I guess one pay per call/click to call news item deserves another one. According this announcement, click to call has come to Australia with a pilot project just launched with Australia's Sensis.com.au web engine. The service is powered by Estara, the same company that offers VoIP click to call services to A9's Yellow Pages and others including the Findexa, a European directory from Norway.

Postscript: Although now info about a deal between Estrata and Yahoo UK/Ireland are listed on the web site or in the Yahoo click to call announcement from a few months ago, the Yahoo UK/Ireland logo is visible on the Estrata home page (screen cap).

Posted by Gary Price at 2:13 AM | Permalink

Infospace Calls On Ingenio for Pay Per Call Partnership

News out of San Francisco and Seattle today that InfoSpace and Ingenio have announced a partnership that will bring Ingenio's Pay Per Call technology to the entire network of Infospace properties including Dogile, MetaCrawler, WebCrawler and Infospace mobile services beginning in Q1 2006.

Mark Barach, Ingenio's Chief Marketing Officer, told Elinor Mills at News.com that customers pay on average $9 to $10 per call.

Ingenio also provides pay per call services for AOL.

From the announcement: The agreement gives Ingenio advertisers broad reach across the entire network of InfoSpace Web properties, in response to consumer search queries. Ingenio advertisers will also be able to reach mobile consumers with distribution across InfoSpace's mobile search applications. InfoSpace provides content and services to every major carrier in North America, reaching 90 percent of U.S. mobile

Complete news release here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:52 AM | Permalink

November 23, 2005

Google Begins Test of "Click-to-Call" Advertising Program

If you wondered when Google might begin offering pay-per-call ads, or at least click-to-call, it looks like the time is now.

In a very thorough blog post, Greg Yardley reports (nice work Greg, screen caps, too) that Google has started to test click-to-call ads. No word if the test is limited to only the US or if advertisers are paying and being listed on a pay-per-call basis or if this is an add-on to paying by the click. Yardley's post also points to a Google Click-to-Call FAQ that offers a few more details about how the system works:

We're testing a new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page ? over the phone.

Here's how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click 'Connect For Free,' Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party. Then, chat away on our dime.

We won't share your telephone number with anyone, including the advertiser. When you're connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked so the advertiser can't see it. In addition, we'll delete the number from our servers after a short period of time.

Am I charged to connect to an advertiser?

No. Google foots the bill for all calls - local and long-distance. However, if we call a cell phone number, you may incur airtime fees depending on the cell phone plan. Check your cell phone provider for details. [SNIP] In addition, we only store your information (including your phone number, date, time, and call length) temporarily for no longer than 4 months after the last time you used the service.

There is also a click-to-call privacy FAQ.

Note: I tried the same search as shown in Greg's post and did not get any pay-per-call options. I tried several other searches and came up empty on all occasions.

The screen caps show AdWord listings with a green telephone icon located next to them. When the user clicks the icon, a box appears where the user enters their phone number (and also decide to save the number on their computer for future click-to-call sessions and according to the FAQ, "other Google services, such as our mobile services." It's stored via an encrypted cookie on your computer.

Also worth noting that the Google's click-to-call connectivity comes from an unamed third party vendor.

About a month ago, Danny and others blogged about Yahoo starting to test pay-per-call in the U.S. using Ingenio?s technology. Ingenio also powers AOL's pay-per-call program that Chris wrote about earlier this year. Yahoo launched pay-per-call in the UK in August.

Want to discuss? Check out the SEW Forums thread: Google Begins Testing Click to Call Advertising

Postscript: I checked to see if Google had already trademarked/service marked the phrase, "Click-to-Call." Found nothing. Similar spellings are registered. CLICK2CALL is registered to a mortgage company in New York while CLICK-2-CALL is registered to VoIP provider, Vonage.

Postscript 2: We asked Google:

1) Who is powering the click-to-call feature?

2) How can advertisers do this. Is it an invite only pilot program or what?

3) Are ads sold on a cost-per-click basic or a pay-per-call basis?

4) Does Google foot the bill, or do advertisers pay some of the call?

5) Who is seeing these ads -- why can't everyone right now see them doing similar searches to how they were first spotted?

And got back this statement answering very little:

Google is always considering new ways to provide value to its advertisers and we frequently run tests of potential new features and products. We are currently conducting a limited test of a pay-per-call model, but we don't have any additional information to share at this time.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:32 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Yahoo Testing Pay Per Call In US

Yahoo Testing Pay Per Call has member Webvisitor reporting that Ingenio is telling him that Yahoo is testing the company's pay-per-call solution. Ingenio already provides AOL pay-per-call listings, as covered more in A Closer Look at Pay-per-Call Search Marketing from SearchDay earlier this year. Yahoo launched pay-per-call in the UK in August.

Postscript: Greg Sterling, Johnathan Thaw over at Bloomberg tell me (no story I can link to, sorry) and this news item all have Yahoo confirming the test on its side of things.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:33 PM | Permalink

October 24, 2005

InfoSpace Announces New Pay-Per-Call Solution

Stories from Clickz and DMNews.com report that InfoSpace has partnered with Jambo to announce a new pay-per-call program.

Technology provider Jambo will create a unique, trackable local phone number for each listing on the Infospace site. Calls made through this number will be tracked through Jambo's servers, and delivered to the merchant with a branded message appended to the beginning to the call, letting the merchant know the lead came from Infospace...Once a merchant begins getting calls, Jambo will follow up, either with a human sales person or via an automated phone call inviting them to sign up with Jambo for enhanced services. Merchants can pay a per-call fee to get higher placement in search results on Infospace, as well as on other directories, local and vertical search engines in Jambo's network. Jambo customers also get detailed demographic and geographic information about each caller.

More in the official news release from Jambo.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink

October 3, 2005

Call Tracking Is For Everyone, Even If Pay Per Call Isn't

Honestly, all the hype over pay-per-call often makes me shake my head. Yes, it can be a simple way for people without web sites to get search-targeted traffic. But people who say they'd prefer a phone call rather than a web site visit because they can track and act on the call? Then just run an ad to a page with your phone number! That's cheaper than doing pay-per-call, and you can still get the call. Pay Per Call vs. Call Tracking: Walk Before You Run from Justin Sanger at ClickZ looks at this "walk before you run" approach in more depth. He rightly explains that pay per call is not the same as call tracking. Calls can be tracked without going into pay per call, and many would benefit by doing so.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:53 PM | Permalink

September 24, 2005

Pay-per-Call: Hype vs. Reality

Pay-per-call advertising is being touted by many as the next big thing in search marketing. With eBay justifying its recent purchase of Skype by citing the potential of pay-per-call, and AOL, Microsoft and others jumping into the game, it's a hot topic. But is pay-per-call a viable option for search marketers today?

When AOL launched its pay-per-call program last April, I took a more in-depth look at the opportunities offered to search marketers in A Closer Look at Pay-per-Call Search Marketing. We've also had panels covering pay-per-call programs at Search Engine Strategies (see the SearchDay articles Pay-Per-Call: A New Avenue for Search Marketers and Search Advertising that Makes the Phone Ring for reports on these sessions).

ClickZ columnist Pamela Parker took a closer look at the recent activity in the pay-per-call space, and concluded that despite the hype, things are really just getting started.

"When I say the pay-per-call concept has jumped the shark, I mean the acquisitions and related hype have nowhere left to go. However, the reality of pay-per-call, for both media companies and advertisers, has only just begun," she wrote.

After talking with a number of key players, she concluded that the advertisers best served by pay-per-call programs are local businesses, service businesses, those selling high-consideration purchases, or any combination of the three. She offers excellent case studies with a comparison of the pricing models and success factors in Pay-Per-Call: Tales from the Trenches.

Want to discuss? Join the Are You Ready for Pay-Per-Call? conversation in our Search Engine Watch forums.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:37 PM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

Some Advertisers Loving Pay Per Call

Online advertisers turning to pay-per-call from the Associated Press looks at pay per call search ads, citing some advertisers loving it. One florist says he closes one sale every 70 clicks with PPC but one sales in three calls with pay-per-call. Of course, the calls seem to cost much, much more than clicks, the article says. Still, analysts think pay-per-call will find a lucrative niche among search ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:01 AM | Permalink

September 1, 2005

Microsoft Acquisition To Lead To Pay-Per-Call Ads?

Microsoft Buy Opens Pay-Per-Call Possibilities from ClickZ looks briefly at how Microsoft's acquisition of VoIP firm Teleo might feed into a pay-per-call system to integrate into its planned paid search service. It picks up from the brief observation Jupiter Research analyst Gary Stein made about this on his blog.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:47 PM | Permalink

August 21, 2005

Miva's Pay-Per-Call Service in the UK Goes Live in September

The Netimperative article: Miva launches pay-per-call service, reports that Miva's (aka FindWhat) pay-per-call service will go live in the UK on September 13th but, "advertisers can already sign-up for an account in advance of the launch."

Posted by Gary Price at 1:48 PM | Permalink

August 10, 2005

Yahoo Launches Pay-Per-Call in the UK and Ireland

Yahoo launches pay-per-call service Source: Netimperative

The service is already available in Yahoo Cars and will be introduced into Yahoo’s other e-commerce properties, Shopping and Travel following an initial introductory period beginning in early August on its shopping comparison portal Kelkoo.

A few more details in the news release.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:48 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2005

Pay Per Call May Rise To $4 Billion In 2009

Kelsey Group: Consumers, Click Fraud Will 'Compel' Pay-Per-Call Adoption from MediaPost looks at a new Kelsey Group report projecting that pay-per-call revenues may grow to between $1.4 and $4 billion in the US by 2009. Currently, they amount for a "negligible" amount of paid search spending. The report also speculates that if click fraud concerns grow, some advertisers might consider pay-per-call as an alternative. Of course, online merchants might more likely look to doing something like revenue sharing or cost-per-acquisition deals. More about the report directly from Kelsey here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:49 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2005

Espotting Plans Pay-Per-Call Service in the UK

Netimperative reports that pay-per-call advertising is coming soon to the United Kingdom via a planned service from Espotting. SEM firm Think UK has been hired to run the service. The article says that the new service will be available in the "coming months."

Postscript: Espotting has denied any partnership or specific timing. More from Netimperative: Espotting denies pay-per-call link.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:13 PM | Permalink

April 21, 2005

Dialing in to AOL's Pay-Per-Call Program

AOL is offering a new form of search advertising called pay-per-call, an appealing alternative to pay-per-click programs for businesses that don't have web sites, but also to any business that wants direct human contact with prospective customers.

Today's SearchDay article, A Closer Look at Pay-per-Call Search Marketing, talks about the benefits of the program for all advertisers, including a potential "triple play" for savvy search marketers that can take advantage of the newness of the program to garner three listings on a search result page.

A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members provides detailed instructions for enrolling in Ingenio's pay-per-call program, including ad guidelines, how to determine competitors' bids and the performance reporting provided by the company.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:18 AM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

The Pros and Cons of Pay-Per-Call Advertising

Pay-per-call search ads display phone numbers, rather than links, for searchers to act upon. Proponents say that anyone taking the time to pick up the phone and make a call is a highly qualified prospect, and it's comparatively easy for phone reps to close a sale with these motivated buyers. Detractors say that pay-per-call ads are vastly more expensive than pay-per-click ads, and there's insufficient inventory for many advertisers.

Who's right? In today's SearchDay article, Search Advertising that Makes the Phone Ring, guest writer Patricia Hursh covers a recent Search Engine Strategies session where panelists debated these and other issues surrounding this new form of search advertising.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:14 AM | Permalink

April 15, 2005

AOL Introduces Pay-Per-Call Ads

AOL Search has quietly launched a pay-per-call advertising program, powered by Ingenio. The program is similar to pay-per-click programs offered by Google, Overture and others, with several key differences. Pay-per-call ads appear at the top of sponsored links in AOL Search results, and display a toll-free number in the search result. Clicking on the ad directs the searcher to an information page with a description and additional details about the advertiser, rather than to a landing page on the advertiser's web site.

I'm planning an in-depth look at AOL's new program next week. Meanwhile, check out the SearchDay article Pay-Per-Call: A New Avenue for Search Marketers, or if you can't wait to sign up, visit Ingenio to learn more.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:11 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2005

Calling for Conversions

Pay per click advertising campaigns are great, if you have a web site with a landing page, product offerings and other meaningful information for consumers. For advertisers that don't have a web site, however, there's little incentive to participate in a paid search campaign.

Until recently, that is. The past year has seen the emergence of a new type of paid search advertising program that doesn't require merchants or service providers to have an online presence. In Tuesday's SearchDay article, Pay-Per-Call: A New Avenue for Search Marketers, guest writer Heather Lloyd-Martin covers a recent Search Engine Strategies panel where the pioneers of this new marketing format talked about how it works, and why it's particularly appealing to the millions of local advertisers that don't have a web site.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:34 PM | Permalink

January 26, 2005

Pay-Per-Call at AOL

Pay-Per-Call gained even more momentum last week when AOL announced that they'll soon offer advertisers this service. An article by Michael Bazeley in the SJ Merc takes a look: AOL to try Ingenio's technology.

Though the pay-per-call concept is new, Ingenio is not. Founded in 1999 as Keen.com, the 90-person company developed technology that allows it to track and bill for phone call usage. Its first use of the technology was for an e-commerce Web site that allowed Web users to find professionals willing to offer phone advice in areas such as tax preparation and computer technical support.

More about pay-per-call and Ingenio in blog posts here and here.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:43 AM | Permalink

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