Google on Thursday launched a click-to-call feature for its mobile  advertisements. The new function works with the iPhone, Android-based devices, and other smartphones. The AdWords function lets consumers call a vendor by clicking on a link that displays the phone number rather than clicking through to a web site and searching for the number.
"Sometimes when you're searching for a local business on your mobile device, you're not looking for their web site, but rather to connect by phone," said Surojit Chatterjee, product manager for Google's mobile-ads team. "After searching for a restaurant, you might want to call and make a reservation. Or after searching for a video store, you might want to find out if they have the video you want."
An Intuitive Experience
Chatterjee added that the ads and phone numbers displayed are based on the smartphone user's location. So if a store or restaurant has multiple locations, the user will be calling the nearest one.
Users can also use Google Maps with the My Location feature to make sure they get search results tailored to their location. The feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near users to approximate their current location. Google admits it's not quite GPS, but insists it comes pretty close.
Meredith Papp, a product marketing manager for the Google mobile-ads team, said advertisers can benefit by allowing users to click to call right from an ad just like they can click through to the advertiser's web site.
"Not only does this feature offer helpful information for users, but advertisers who participated in our beta trial saw really great results, ranging from five to 30 percent increases in their click-through rates," Papp said. "The cost of the click on the phone number is the same as the cost of a click to visit your web site."
New Possibilities for Advertisers
Google has used click to call and experimented with pay-per-call advertising on PCs, but discontinued both those efforts. Click to call on smartphones makes sense, given the affinity between phones and calls as well as the location technology embedded in the phone, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.
"Many local advertisers -- large and small -- want to receive calls rather than clicks. And this new option provides a great deal of value and new possibilities for those advertisers. It's also a bargain -- call for the price of a click -- for early advertisers, compared to more formal pay-per-call programs out there today."
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