Mountain View, California — What if AdWords and Google Voice had a progeny? For global search engine giant Google, an empire built on clicks, is slowly moving away from them as the only measure of success for ads. In the latest example, it is introducing an “AdWords Call Metrics” to its search ads, which will allow advertisers to add a unique toll-free number to their ads and track the resulting calls, along with how long they last and where they originated.
Google is employing the technology behind Google Voice with AdWords. That equals call tracking for AdWords campaigns. The search engine titan’s aim is to deliver call tracking — offering on both local and toll-free (VoIP) numbers — is to show advertisers that AdWords is driving more value than they realize. In other words, Google is seeking to expose the additional ROI that AdWords drives in offline actions and activity.
To be clear: The AdWords call metrics functionality has been under testing for a while, and it still would not be available to everyone anytime soon. But today, Google just wanted to familiarize everyone with the project and announce that a more complete roll-out will occur in the next few months. Moreover, advertisers would not be charged for the calls, only clicks, but Google said it would consider such a setup down the road.
In fact, in its blog post, Google says, “You will still only pay for clicks on your ad, although this may change as the product continues to evolve.” Pretty strong evidence that pay-per-call is coming to PC AdWords campaigns.
Similar to phone extensions, here is what the ads look like: 1) top AdWords position, 2) right column 3) mobile:
Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager over AdWords, explained in a post on the Inside AdWords blog, “Using the technology behind Google Voice, call metrics assigns your campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into your ad on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the number is clickable.”
“We believe advertisers are actually getting a lot of value beyond clicks,” said Chatterjee. “It takes it beyond clicks and online conversions.”
He then continued, “When a user calls the number in your ad, the call is automatically diverted to your business, and AdWords notes that this call took place. Then, when you look at your AdWords reports, you will notice the number of calls generated by each campaign, call duration, and in the near future, caller area code. You will still only pay for clicks on your ads, but we intend to charge for call metrics in the future.”
Now that Google has a much more diverse advertising business that includes video and display ads, the search engine giant has moved to go beyond the click. And AdWords Call Metrics is an interesting concept with a fair amount of promise. Depending on what sort of fees Google decides to attach, lots of business owners might do well to use AdWords call metrics to measure their campaigns’ effectiveness.
“We are generating value we have not clearly connected so far,” Chatterjee said. “It allows us to demonstrate this value.”
But the ridiculousness is Google erected its massive business through highly accountable search advertising that charged only for clicks. Google has already added click-to-call capabilities to mobile search ads.
Some people should even be able to visit Google Ad Innovations and find the feature enabled on their accounts now.