The New Dial-Up Media Model: Pay-per-Call
This article begins with the motivation and purpose behind pay-per-click advertising. When online advertising began to take the advertising world by storm, a Travel agency wanted to join the club. They had advertised in the traditional route such as the phone book and telemarketing, but desired a presence on the web. However, they felt it was not necessary to create a website for their business to be successful. The heart of their business was telephone calls with customers. Therefore, they proposed the notion that is now termed pay-per-call.
Ingenio, a search engine and directory monetization company, followed up on this idea several years later and created a Pay-Per-Call Advertising Platform. This platform would allow businesses without websites to connect with Internet customers. Pay-per-call advertising is similar to previous used Internet advertising. In pay-per-call advertising an advertiser pays when a customer has called their toll free phone number placed in the advertisement. Whereas, in traditional advertising an advertiser pays when a customer “clicks” on the Internet advertisement.
A key to any advertising strategy is analyzing its return on investment (ROI). Is pay-per-call effective? How can its usage be tracked? Ingenio provides tracking information each time an Internet user calls the toll-free phone number in the advertiser’s paid search ad. Ingenio then charges the advertiser and has the added benefit of tracking the process in real time.
This article promotes the benefits of pay-per-call advertising for companies that are local, heavily rely on in-bound customer calls, and that don’t have the infrastructure to maintain and create a company website. The interest in pay-per-call advertising is rising. Jupiter Research surveyed small business advertisers. 48% were interested in pay-per-call advertising while 40% would assign more financial resources to pay-per-call advertising.