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What is Pay Per Call? How does it work?
Pay Per Call is the next wave of Internet advertising. Similar to pay per click advertising. Pay Per Call has much more to offer and a wider audience in mind. Pay per Call (PP-Call) is aimed at small businesses that do not have a web presence on the Internet. However, this form of advertising can be used by all types of businesses or services offered on the network.
Advertisers create an ad similar to a pay-per-click (PP-Click) ad. Advertisers choose the key terms they would like to appear on. They also choose their geographic location (local, regional, or national). Pricing starts at $2 and can go up to $20. The ad itself consists of a headline and 2 additional lines of text (including a URL if the business has one). Internet users then call the toll-free number shown in the ad. After the user calls the number, the call is forwarded to the actual business phone. Seems pretty basic, doesn't it? But I had some questions I needed answered, so I contacted Ingenio and talked to them about their service.
My first question was about calls made outside of business hours. If my company phones are manned Monday through Friday, 9-5, will they still get calls after 5 p.m.? m. of Friday? The answer is that there is currently no automatic schedule that turns your ads on or off at a specific time. However, you can manually log in and pause your account so your ads won't show outside of business hours. Automated scheduling is in the process of being rolled out, but there is currently no set date for it to go into effect. Of course, you can also put your business hours in the ad, but this can take up valuable space that could be better used to describe products or services. Businesses that have a call center for after-hours calls are effectively 24-hour businesses, so this shouldn't be a problem for them.
My next question was about wrong numbers and short calls. We all have. We see one number and dial another. Or, we see something and on an impulse reach for the phone, then change our mind ten seconds after dialing. So, does the advertiser pay for these types of calls? Is there a time limit for a person to be on the phone? There answer is yes. Calls must last at least ten seconds. This should be more than enough time to establish that the wrong number was dialed. I also wondered about people trying to beat the system. The problem with PP-Click is that people can bookmark and engage a seller with no other intention than trying to increase their income from ads placed on their site. Ingenio has taken this into account. They can trace the calls that come through their system. Any number seen abusing it can be blocked. Hopefully, this will discourage any kind of scam to increase profits on the sites that sponsor these ads.
I was also interested in knowing about ads that provided a URL. Was an additional charge imposed when someone clicked on the ad? Fortunately, there isn't. If a business also sells online, they could certainly use this to their advantage. Of course, one of the main advantages of this type of advertising is that it targets potential customers who, for whatever reason, do not like to shop online. Overall, PP-Call can be worth its weight in gold. At least the potential is there. Will it overtake PP-Click as the preferred advertising method? Probably not. However, it gives advertisers who were previously unable to advertise on the network a reason to get started. Perhaps then they will see the importance of having a web presence on the Internet.
