Click To Hit

Based on a Businessweek report, Google and Ebay have announced an exclusive deal where Google will provide all text advertising on Ebay International sites. This comes on the heels of a deal announced back in May between Yahoo and Ebay where Yahoo cornered exclusive advertising rights on their US based properties.

The key to this new announcement is the fact they are promoting the advertising medium of “click to call” which allows a surfer to enter their phone number directly into the ad itself, where the system will then call both the surfer and the advertiser and connect them on a conference call. Both Ebay and Google have VOIP solutions through their respective GoogleTalk and Skype technologies. 

This move is a definite boost to the concept, which had allot of hype when I first posted about it back in November last year, but hasn't really materialized into as popular of an advertising medium as I had originally thought. In my previous article I hailed Click Per Call as an advertising medium to watch since it provided a tangible and manageable process to online sales, something that PPC could only dream to achieve. An interesting comment came in lamenting the hype, stating that although Click per Call had some immediate applications, anything that didn't have a complex sales cycle wouldn't necessarily see an immediate benefit.

In hindsight the statement was quite prophetic, and IMO this deal was more to foster buzz and communicate the benefits of this advertising medium for both of their VOIP solutions versus anything really revenue related. Neither company is willing to confirm that this deal will affect their bottom lines for at least the next two years, and they were unwilling to commit as to which of their technologies would be used, so to me this has more of an awareness and marketing strategy behind the announcement than anything tangible from a revenue perspective.

The rumormill has it that Mazda will be doing another recall for their flagship sports coupe the RX-8 rotary.

Although I've only owned my car for not quite a year and a half now, I've already had problems with water condensation in both headlights and taillights, a neutral switch in my transmission failing, and issues with my air conditioner causing idling problems necessitating a new throttlebody to be installed.

The one thing I have to say is that Mazda has quickly and willingly replaced and / or fixed every one of my issues to date so although most may look at this list and balk at buying one of these cars, I have to say I love the car so much that it hasn't affected my perception one bit, especially since I have a 2004 model which means my car could one day become a collectors piece… until I heard about this most recent recall of course.

The latest recall seems to be caused by the RENESIS rotary engine losing vacuum pressure and leaking oil into the catalytic converters causing premature cat failures. The difference this time is any car tested to have a vacuum loss will immediately have the entire engine replaced… Wow Mazda, now that's great customer service and quite a few car manufacturers could really learn some lessons here.

Thankfully I've always taken great care of my machine and never had any power loss or issues though, and this seems to be due to the way I drive since the rotary engine loves to be driven at high rpms which I've always been happy to facilitate. This appears to be confirmed with the latest recall since the majority of owners experiencing engine replacement issues to date are due to the way they drive the cars mostly at low rpm where the computer mapping on the cars retards the oil injection at low rpm. If you wind out the rpm's on a continual basis, don't live in a hot climate, and do not use synthetic oil then you seem to be pretty safe so I'm not too concerned.

My only concern is if my car fails the test, what Mazda wants to do is replace the entire engine which is both good and bad. My car came over from Japan, where my engine was made in Japan with all original parts. If they replace the engine the new one will most likely be made in North America and could even be a re-built model versus brand new since Mazda's plan is to rebuild the replaced engines and then re-circulate them.

That's bad news, and something that would definitely affect the collector value 10, 20, or more years down the road which definitely upsets me. Mazda, if you are listening, you should guarantee only new engines be put back into these cars and they should all be manufactured in your Japan facilities to ensure the long ter value of your vehicles in the North American market which is why some of us invested in your brand in the first place.