Pay-Per-Call: A Viable Lead
Estimates from The Kelsey Group say pay-per-call will reach generate gross revenues of between $1.4 and $4 billion by 2009.
Pay-per-call advertising presents an alternative to PPC models; the platform offers better ability to track conversions. A new The Kelsey Group report, “Calls, Clicks & SMEs: Driving Leads from Web to Phone” discusses the pay-per-call model.
The report estimates pay-per-call will generate gross revenues of between $1.4 and $4 billion. The projection is contingent on several market variables.
Pay-per-call ability to track results makes it a cost-per-lead model. PPC ability to identify results is lower as it offers no direct communication from the consumer to the advertiser.
Pay-per-call pricing is a point of contention. Both flat-fee and auction-modeled costs have been structured, with proponents on both sides. “We don’t know exactly how the pricing will play out. There will probably be multiple models, flat-rates, and auction,” Greg Sterling, program director for The Kelsey Group told ClickZ News.
A third option is the tracking model. Not exactly pay-per-click, this model uses an analytics package to report on how many calls were generated from an online ad.
Pay-per-call has long existed in direct marketing and other channels. It was introduced to the Web by
| Customer Contact and Call Rates After Lookup | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Print Yellow Pages | Internet Yellow Pages | Local Commercial Searches | |
| Metric | References | References (lookups) |
Geotargeted commercial searches |
| Source | Yellow Pages Association | Yellow Pages Association | Kelsey Group Forecast; Ingenio data |
| Customer contact (%) | 83% | 67% | 32% |
| Customer call (%) | 61% | 73% | 25% |
| Net call rate, 2005 (%) | 50% | 49% | 8% |
| Source: The Kelsey Group, 2005 | |||
