13 million small businesses will embrace pay-per-call.

THE NASCENT PAY-PER-CALL ADVERTISING MARKET could draw as many as 13 million business owners who lack Web sites but want to advertise online, said Ingenio Chief Marketing Officer Mark Barach at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York earlier this month. America Online's Executive Director for Search and Navigation, Brendan Benzing, added that AOL is "quite bullish" on pay-per-call ads. Ingenio signed a deal with AOL in January to provide technology for pay-per-call ads served on AOL's search pages, starting in April. "AOL's stepping up because we have a lot of confidence in the model," Benzing said. "At the end of the day, businesses know the value of a call, and they're willing to pay."

As with pay-per-click ads, advertisers bid on keywords or categories and are listed alongside natural search results--but instead of a link to a Web site, the ad directs consumers to a telephone number. Pay-per-call often appeals to smaller, local businesses that don't have a Web site, and to service-based businesses that seek local customers who prefer to call rather than interact with a Web site.

Businesses do have to pay quite a bit for pay-per-call--anywhere from twice as much to 10 times more than pay-per-click ads, according to the panel members. But conversion rates are much higher, FindWhat Senior Vice President for pay-per-call Michael Kearns said, because consumers who make a call are interested in making purchases immediately. "It's about using the power of the human voice to close business on the telephone," he said.

FindWhat began to serve pay-per-call ads, also using Ingenio's technology, last year. "We think that pay-per-call is going to be one of the most fast-growing categories in the next five years," Kearns said. "It's a hybrid category that offers the best between direct response and search."

(Online Media Daily Mar 2, 2005)