Marketing Pilgrim

Greg Yardley points out that Google’s next giving Ingenio, Who’s Calling, and others a run for their money in the Pay-Per-Call arena.

In a new twist on the performance-based pay-per-call advertising medium (that’s-a-lot-of-dashes), Google’s new service basically acts as a call bridge between the advertiser and the consumer.

Here’s how it works:
– Consumer does a search and sees a phone listing in the paid search results.
– Consumer clicks the telephone graphic, prompting the consumer for their phone number.
– Google then calls both the consumer and the advertiser, and bridges the call.

However, as Danny points out, there are still questions to be answered such as; Are ads sold on a cost-per-click basic or a pay-per-call basis? and Does Google foot the bill, or do advertisers pay some of the call?

This should definitely be interesting to see unfold. What I find even more interesting is Google’s timing. Launching something like this in the middle of the holiday season could be crippling, as it has been with Google Analytics and their having to temporarily hold off on new account signups. So, my bet is that they’ll wait until early next year. But hey, it’s Google, so who knows?

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