Click To Hit

Google, Yahoo,and Marchex have all been making waves by adding Pay Per Call types of advertising to their range of Lead Generation services in the last month. This clearly highlights the value of this new advertising medium that a few smaller players and even AOL have been experimenting with for a while now.

Think about it for a second… a key element in any marketing strategy is to ensure a quick turnaround time on lead generation to get the interested party in front of the purchase while still warm and “excited” about the advertising message. With current Internet Pay - Per advertising available today, this is all left in the hands of the potential buyer.

With Pay Per Click, or even the new Pay Per Unique models dominating the advertising networks, you have a potential buyer who sees a marketing message and is interested enough to click for more information… this is the point any supplier would love to deploy their human marketing / sales  resources to get in front of the potential customer in order to qualify and capitalize on the interest. With the current models of advertising control is lost to the whim of the potential purchaser allowing the opportunity for doubt to creep into their buy decision due to a potential objection that may not even exist thereby risking the sale. That type of scenario always negatively affects conversion numbers.

Imagine if you could immediately initiate a conversation with the potential customer the moment they clicked that link and you now start to see the potential of this advertising model and why the big boys are all clamoring to get into the mix. Add to this the benefits provided to local SME's who can geotarget the ads and you see a whole new market emerging for Internet Advertising since brick and mortar's have traditionally shied away from anything online. They prefer to use the yellow pages where the majority of leads are, yes you guessed it, funneled through the telephone.

The interesting new twist on this application is Google's entry with a service that's rumored to connect the seller and the buyer without exchanging any numbers or personal information. This is clearly a differentiator for users who are scared they'll be added to telemarketing lists or have their privacy compromised that may generate even more results compared to the competition in this privacy conscious environment the Internet has become.

In Google's case, a phone icon has begun to appear with some ads; after clicking on it, users can enter their phone number. Google then generates a call between the user and the advertiser, according to a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page detailing aspects of the pilot program on Google's Web site.

The call is free to the Google users.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the near future as the market reacts to this model. My predictions are Pay Per Click will be relegated to the back burner as Pay Per Impression has and there'll be many new positions for inside sales reps and customer service agents to fill their time and pocket books.

It's great to see a couple of groups step up to the plate to exclaim their opposition to this deal here and here.

To do nothing would be a travesty to the model ICANN and the foundation of the Internet is built upon. Transparency, openness, and community concern would be thrown out the window with this deal and I hope we see additional suits announced in the countdown to the ICANN meetings in Vancouver this week in order to bring all of the serious negatives to light before ratification.