We all have a phone. In fact most of us have a least three – home, work and mobile and we use them every single day of our lives. Pay-per-call, launched in the US just over six months ago, is finally combining the convenience and mass penetration of the phone together with the phenomenal search capabilities of the Internet. What's more is that it is now open to companies that do not have a website and have traditionally only been able to advertise online through services such as Yell and other directory listings.
Pay-per-call works by producing advertisements that are similar to those that appear on search networks such as Google or Yahoo!, however retailers rather than paying when a prospective customer clicks through from an advertisement, pay when they receive a phone call. When the customer clicks on the pay-per-call advertisement he sees a browser window that includes text requesting he phone the retailer on a given number.
Pay per Call (Who are the players?)
Greenlight are currently running Pay per Call ads in the US and UK for clients. In the UK companies that currently have live inventory are MIVA (formerly Espotting/FindWhat), and Callgen.
Recently, Kelkoo have launched Pay per Call across their UK properties, the service is already available on Yahoo Cars and will also be introduced into other e-commerce properties such as shopping and Travel. While, Kelkoo owners Yahoo are using Ingenio to trial Pay Per Call for use on their Pay per Click network Overture.
Google have recently announced that they are beta testing Click to Call, which they are showing intermittently on Google.com within the current adwords listings, the only visible difference being a small telephone icon appearing ot the right of the listing. See attached factsheet for more info and screenshots of Google Click to Call.
Pricing
Pricing is currently sector based, and the minimum call charges on MIVA are 2 pounds per call, while Callgen are 1. Current pricing is working on a model of current average CPC x 10, this however has been capped at 25 pounds as competitive sectors such as Mortgages could have been paying up to 40 pounds per call. Travel campaigns from the outset will be looking at a cost per call of around 5/6 pounds.
More here.
