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Pay-Per-Call Advertising – Is Anyone Calling?

Posted: February 6th, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: VoIP News | 6 Comments »

I read yesterday that VoIP, Inc released their patented Pay-Per-Call advertising network “RazrClick”. In a nutshell, RazrClick allows advertiser to receive placement across a search or content and pay $8 to $10 for every call they receive from a probable purchaser. Sounds like a slam dunk right?

While VoIP, Inc touts that they have agreements with Google and eBay to leverage their technology, it has been widely reported that Google’s first pay-per-call trials where yielded poor results and that pay-per-call was no longer a priority. If the king of online search advertising trials were not well received and they show little interest in pursuing it in the future, it could signal that what seems like a no brainer could be a dud.

My take is that most folks using the Internet to shop are trying to avoid interaction and that the prospects of calling a merchant are not as attractive as placing an order online or sending an email inquiry. That and the fact that advertisers are being charged $8 to $10 per call, leads me to believe that although pay-per-call has a lot of hype, like it’s ad supported calling brethren, just does not have legs.

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6 Comments on “Pay-Per-Call Advertising – Is Anyone Calling?”

  1. 1 Pages tagged "voip" said at 4:00 am on February 7th, 2008:

    [...] bookmarks tagged voip Pay-Per-Call Advertising – Is Anyone Calling? saved by 3 others     SniperWj bookmarked on 02/07/08 | [...]

  2. 2 luca said at 6:50 am on February 7th, 2008:

    I can’t agree Garrett. Read this:
    http://www.lucafiligheddu.com/2007/12/the-need-of-a-human-on-the-line.html

  3. 3 Michael White said at 9:38 am on February 7th, 2008:

    8-10$ Per call? Online tire kicking now has a dollar amount associated with it.

    Nice article…

  4. 4 Michael Talbert said at 5:49 pm on February 8th, 2008:

    The day after they announce the deal with Google and eBay, VoIP Inc. shuts down its network operations.
    Another pure play VoIP provider bites the dust.

  5. 5 thehitman said at 5:15 pm on February 9th, 2008:

    (VOIC 0.01, +0.00, +47.3%) this could help the company grow their business… away from VoIP.

  6. 6 Khyle said at 2:24 pm on February 11th, 2008:

    A couple comments:

    *First – full disclosure – I work for IfByPhone, a company that provides Click-to-Call and other features.

    I think integrating click-to-call links with specific types of ads might make sense, depending on the market. Someone googling for “chicago plumber” might be more likely to call without visiting a website than say “LCD TV.” I’d just expect that the risk-reward proposition to be a very important part of marketing campaign.

    However, given those price points, that is a big and risky cost to the people taking out the ads. The real value is getting people to their site and then putting click-to-calls in specific areas of their site that will allow them to get higher quality leads at a much cheaper price than the Pay-per-call program you mention.

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