US advertisers measure phone calls from search marketing
November 4, 2010 Leave a Comment
Google are extending their AdWords call metrics product to more US advertisers, with plans to extend it further in the future.
Google’s call metrics enables advertisers to measure the phone calls that their Google AdWords campaigns generate. Using the technology behind Google Voice, call metrics assigns each campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into ads on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the number is clickable.
When a user calls the number in the ad, the call is automatically routed to the client and AdWords notes that the call took place. AdWords reports then show the number of calls generated by each campaign, call duration, and in the near future, caller area code.
Once advertisers know where their calls are coming from, they can refine their marketing strategy – testing different ad text variations to see which drives the most calls or reallocate budget to campaigns that bring the highest ROI.
For now advertisers still only pay for clicks on ads, but Google intend to charge for call metrics in the future.