Google is offering advertisers using its AdWords system an option to bid differently for phone calls versus clicks.
The new ‘bid to call’ tool will charge advertisers on a cost-per-phone call (CPP) basis.
For example, if an advertiser is willing to pay $5 for a phone call but only $1 for a click to their site, they can now specify so.
The ad position for these are based on the quality score and CPP price.
The algorithm is Ad rank = (max CPC bid x click quality score) + (max CPP x phone call quality score).
The ‘bid-to-call’ ads work by assigning and placing a free forwarding number next to an advertisers ad text on Google search pages.
When a user sees an ad and calls the number, AdWords registers the call and forwards it to the advertiser’s business, and AdWords notes that this call took place.
Users can also access detailed call reporting in AdWords, which includes summaries of completed calls, phone-through rate, and phone call costs. Users can also see details for each call, including call time, duration and caller area code.
For now, bid-per-call is available only in the US and UK.
Google said that calls generated from mobile and desktop search ads using call metrics last, on average, six-minutes. The firm has now connected over 12 million calls for thousands of businesses.
Read the official blog post here
