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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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Pay-Per-What? Why the Phone Call Will be King in the Mobile World

Written on
January 17th 2007
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by Marc Barach  |
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Pay-Per-Call’s hybrid nature is also a plus when it comes to mobile advertising. In discussing mobile search, it’s important to make the distinction between mobile search (as in the mobile Web) and the act of searching for business information using mobile phones. As noted at MediaPost’s recent Search Insider Summit, 80 percent of all mobile search and content interaction in the U.S. takes place “on deck” (within a handset application) as opposed to “off deck” (within the mobile Web or WAP environment). A consumer can “search” for a local Starbucks and circumvent the Web entirely by using any number of free directory assistance text messaging services.

Similarly, a consumer is “searching” for a local business on a mobile phone when she calls a free directory assistance provider looking for a nearby hotel from her cell phone.

Regardless of whether the query comes through text or voice, advertisers can today purchase phone calls from these “searching” mobile consumers via the Pay-Per-Call model. As media continue to fragment and new consumer behavior takes hold, the definition of “search” will continue to broaden and advertisers will need simple, effective ways to buy leads from these new channels. Ad networks able syndicate listings across multiple environments and in different formats (both text and audio), while at the same time allowing advertisers to manage campaigns via a single account and online dashboard, will become critical.

Mobile and Local: Hand in Hand

Mobile commercial search is often inherently local in nature. Consumers want to locate products and services that are close by — a bar, a pizza joint, a coffee shop.

For local businesses, mobile search offers that missing link between online search and offline conversion. Consumers can’t often use online shopping carts as part of the purchasing cycle when it comes to local commerce; when they’re ready to buy, they make a phone call or simply walk right into the store. Mobile search gives local players another channel with which to extend existing local campaigns — and the multi-tasking nature of the mobile phone (call, search, text message) creates a new response mechanism to track their success.

For the millions of local businesses that don’t have a Web presence to begin with, or do the majority of their business by phone, Pay-Per-Call makes mobile advertising actually possible. Now, the very local businesses people are searching for can get in on search’s next big thing.

It’s still an early market for mobile, but it’s a ripe one for both advertisers and publishers. Time will tell which ad model will give both the most bang for their proverbial buck.



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