Greg Yardley has the scoop on Google’s latest service: pay-per-call ads.
Try a Google search: if you see a small phone icon next to a company’s sponsored ad unit, click on the icon. You’ll be able to enter your own phone number; from there, Google will call both the company in question and your phone–and finally link the two together. According to the FAQ, Google won’t share your phone number with advertisers or keep it in their own system for long. Note also that customers don’t pay for the call (unless the customer asks Google to connect an advertiser to the customer’s cell phone, in which case the wireless carrier may issue a charge).
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have already tested pay-per-call in one form or another (via Om and Search Engine Watch). I’d expect to see full implementations on all three search engines shortly. It’s a logical extension to each company’s core ad model, and my sense is that both advertisers and customers will find pay-per-call useful. Not sure what they will do to combat the inevitable explosion of crank calls, though…
For more, check out Michael Parekh’s blog, which has a good overview.
That has got to be the most fucked up think I’ve read in my world. Why ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH would you want to phone someone up to sell you stuff? Isn’t it enough to have these idiots phone you up in your home at random times?
Left by khaled on November 24th, 2005