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Marc is the Chief Marketing Officer at Marin Software.

Marc brings over 20 years of experience to Marin where he manages the company’s marketing and business development functions. Prior he served as CMO of Ingenio, Inc. (acquired by AT&T in 2007). Marc has also held the positions of President & CEO of I-Impact, a business analytics company and CMO of InsWeb; the first online insurance marketplace which he helped propel to a $100 million IPO in 1999.

Earlier in his career, Marc served as Vice President, Marketing and Advertising at Charles Schwab & Co., co-founder and principal officer of First Nationwide Bank’s investment subsidiary and has held a variety of marketing management positions at top 10 banks. Marc is a graduate of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received his MBA from State University of New York at Albany.

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Can the Click: Why Pay-Per-Call Represents the New Breed of Ad Strategy

Written on
May 17, 2006 
Author
Marc Barach  |
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Can the Click: Why Pay-Per-Call Represents the New Breed of Ad Strategy

Pay Per Call Today

Today, Pay Per Call advertising is gaining a lot of traction among local and national businesses in categories like financial services and debt consolidation, travel, hospitality, cable and satellite TV and car rentals. However, unexpected business categories continue to discover Pay Per Call, for different reasons. Radiator.com, the leading online provider of radiator sales and distribution, was driven to explore Pay Per Call because of click fraud concerns. John Thys, Director of Internet Marketing, suspects click fraud may have accounted for as much as 35 percent of his company’s $20,000 Google ad bill. Thys views pay Per Call as inherently less susceptible to fraud scams and gets him closer to the “point of sale.” Cost per action lead models, like Pay Per Call or offerings from providers like Snap.com, force accountability by ensuring advertisers only pay for something tangible, like a phone call or a completed online application.

Many national brands, such as 1-800-DENTIST, are discovering that Pay Per Call can drive traffic to call centers directly from the Internet. It enables direct response in the form of a phone call from an online ad, with complete visibility into how that online spend culminated in an offline conversion. “Ingenio Pay Per Call is a great way to get potential customers to call you directly. With Ingenio, you pay for real leads, not ads,” notes Larry Twersky, President, 1-800-DENTIST. “For the first time, companies can truly understand and optimize the relationship between their online campaigns and offline impact.”

While it varies based on the type of business and the amount of sale, across the board, advertiser feedback is that calls do convert better than clicks to a website. For example, a provider of cellular phones and plans finds that using Pay Per Call advertising generates three times better leads than clicks and a national floral service converts approximately 1 in 3 Ingenio calls compared to 1 in 25 clicks.

It’s important to note these are industries where phone calls are a preferred method of interaction because, often times, the purchase is complex, or there is a question and answer period needed before the customer is ready to buy. You can imagine online retailers — like Amazon for example — being less interested in driving phone calls, while other retailers who run both e-commerce websites and support call centers seek to drive traffic to both. American Incorporators Ltd (AIL), one of the nation’s top providers of incorporation services, has been running a Pay Per Call campaign for more than a year, but still estimates it spends about $10,000 a month on its pay-per-click campaign, which the marketing manager, David Clarke, deems moderately successful. He has no intention of scaling back on his pay-per-click programs, and instead is happy to supplement those leads with calls, especially because there are plenty of potential customers who prefer to pick up the phone to call his business.

What’s Next?

As we embark on the next phase on search engine marketing, “search” is not necessarily going to be synonymous with “web search”. The attributes of the paid search approach — the self-qualified customer lead, the pay-for-performance model — have already extended to other formats. Mobile search (via text messaging) and free directory assistance are all tapping into ad-supported models, and these are both examples of sweet spots when it comes to Pay Per Call monetization. For advertisers looking at eventually leveraging these new channels, models like Pay Per Call will become increasingly more relevant — and lucrative.





Reader Comments.

I think pay per call is great for the publishers but is not so sweet for marketers. A solution that has flat fees and gives priority to every advertiser is just around the corner.

Posted by Martin Garcia | 1:52 pm on May 17, 2006.

Actually, a leading pay-per-call advertising network platform that uses the rate card (flat fee per category) approach to pay-per-call, like Mr. Garcia alludes to, has been in the marketplace for more than six months: ZiffLeads.com. And Mr. Barach is right on, in terms of the appeal and new channel opportunities for the pay-per-call model.

Posted by Franklin Bali | 5:40 pm on May 17, 2006.

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