I had the opportunity to speak with Brad Reynolds, CEO of Mongoose Metrics, a Cleveland, Ohio-based call measurement and conversion analytics company. Reynolds was quick to point out that it is not simply a call tracking company, but rather it is dedicated to linking online and offline conversion so clients can better understand what leads to sales conversions. According to Reynolds, “Our business is based around illuminating the sales funnel related to offline conversions. Our goal is to make it easy to track online and offline conversions side-by-side. We want to drive actions like tweaking marketing spend and efforts with a full basket of information.”

While some companies focus entirely on online conversions, the reality, according to Mongoose Metrics, is that a large majority of transactions occur offline via the phone. In most cases there is a chain of events that lead to an offline conversion. By better understanding how online and offline media influence the conversion path, marketers have a better sense of what media and messages they should be using to maximize their effectiveness. With good offline and online conversion data in hand, brands can personalize their messages across media to create a conversation and a stronger relationship.

Mongoose Metrics has also been busy putting together an effective international local number tracking network and recently put together deals in Canada and the U.K. to deliver true local exchange numbers across both countries. Rather than relying on VoIP numbers or toll-free numbers, Mongoose is now able to offer local telephone numbers better linking businesses to their local area. “Until recently, it had been nearly impossible for Canadian and U.K. companies to use local phone numbers to follow visitors from Web-to-phone to understand how their Web sites drive phone calls and ultimately sales,” according to Reynolds. Mongoose Metrics’ move into the U.K. and Canada is a first step in expanding internationally.

When asked where call measurement is headed in the near term, Reynolds quickly pointed to mobile. “While many feel there will be transactions handled on the handset, the current reality is that most sites are not fully enabled for mobile screens, requiring too many clicks and too much scrolling. People want to get a quick answer to their question and often will revert to contacting the store or company since it is easier — and they have a phone in their hand to expedite the need for information. Click-to-call features makes sense on the mobile Web and will offer yet another layer in understanding where offline conversions are initiated.”

When asked about other developments, Reynolds replied, “Mongoose is currently working on a few proprietary products to provide deeper analytics of incoming calls and hopes to create a way to trigger specific actions tied to a recognized set of keywords. This is yet another step Mongoose is taking to help drive conversions and personalize the communication between consumers and advertisers.”

Telmetrics President Bill Dinan wrote an interesting piece in MediaPost this week that offers some practical advice on building pay-per-call programs.

One of the more interesting topics he covers is whether it makes sense for publishers to place a cap on a pay-per-call program. The question involves a real dilemma for publishers. With a cap, publishers stand a very good chance of overdelivering on a program and leaving money on the table. For many operators, the cap is a strong disincentive. Without a cap, they risk scaring away risk-averse small-business advertisers.

To overcome this dilemma, Dinan proposes something I would call a “rolling cap,” which is not unlike the way some mobile phone plans handle unused minutes.

“A good compromise between capping and not capping is to offer a rollover set-up. If an advertiser hits a cap, the overage from another month can carry over to meet the advertiser’s budget and the full value of the advertisement,” Dinan writes in the MediaPost article.

The Kelsey Report is currently researching a report on the practical issues surrounding pay-per-call implementation for directory publishers.

Call measurement firm Telmetrics has issued an announcement detailing its predictions for how pay per call will evolve in 2010. We think it’s a pretty good list. Here is our summation of what they say, with some commentary of our own. Here is the original document.

Agencies will embrace PPC. Telmetrics expects advertisers to pressure ad agencies to provide more performance based advertising solutions. Telmetrics expects agencies to buy ads on subscription and resell to accounts on a ppc basis. We would add that a lot of analytics will be needed for agencies to manage this risk effectively.

Online media continues to embrace PPC. Telmetrics points out that digital media have embraced calls as a powerful lead format, and will continue to enhance pay per click programs with pay per call. We would agree, given that many SMBs place a much higher value on calls vs. clicks.

Advertisers scrutinize call quality. More debate will occur on what constitutes a billable call. Our comment here is that this is an area where pay per call faces its greatest challenge — finding an objective criteria for what is a good vs. a bad call. Using call duration, as well as recording calls to monitor the quality of handling are helpful, but this is one area where advertisers are likely to keep moving the goalposts. The greater the transparency, the fewer the arguments.

Pay per conversion is not the next wave. Telmetrics sees many barriers to adopting pay for conversation as a performance based ad model. First it is difficult to track, though easier than it once was. The bigger problem is that the publisher takes a risk, and then relies on the advertiser’s ability to convert to determine which calls it gets paid for. We would agree that at least in Yellow Pages, this is a ways off.

Gary Campbell is among the directory publishing executives with the most experience in building a performance-based ad model in the print product. He is now hoping to leverage that experience in a new venture called Cost Per Call Solutions.

The new company was founded with colleagues from the recently disbanded Canwest Directories operation. CPC Solutions will offer traditional media players a team of sales reps who will take a cost-per-call package to advertiser at the tail end of a sales canvass in order to close non-advertisers, existing accounts that failed to renew and others that might be more receptive to PPC than a traditional subscription model.

Campbell’s former venture, Canwest Directories, a performance-based print and online directory business with titles in Ottawa, Ontario, and Regina and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was shut down late last year by parent company Canwest.

In a recent telephone conversation, Campbell argued that the shutdown had a lot more to do with the condition of Canwest than the soundness of the directory unit’s operations. Winnipeg-based Canwest is facing serious financial challenges and is at risk of violating debt covenants.

Campbell believes strongly that in less turbulent times, his business would have been given more time to develop, or at least a more aggressive effort would have been made to find a buyer. However, in this media environment Canwest Directories didn’t have the luxury of time. It probably had to produce a monster success in order to have a chance of surviving the current turmoil.

“Canwest’s decision had more to do with the head office than with the [directory] business,” Campbell said.

Despite the demise of Canwest Directories, Campbell believes the lessons learned from two years of selling on a pay-per-call model will be valuable to clients of his new venture. Canwest Directories produced two editions of its pay-per-call book in Ottawa and one each in Regina and Saskatoon. The experience servicing 2,500 pay-per-call advertisers (plus other smaller accounts that bought on a more traditional subscription model) has taught Campbell and his partners a thing or two about which categories, ad sizes and sales approaches work, and do not work, in selling pay-per-call.

One of the core ideas of the new venture is that it makes sense to have a self-contained pay-per-call sales force.

“One of our findings was that once a sales rep has sold this way [pay-per-call] it is difficult for them to sell any other way,” Campbell says.

By bringing in an outside force like his, Campbell contends, publishers can use pay-per-call with minimal risk.

“They do not need to disrupt existing operations,” he says.

Campbell’s new venture certainly is well timed. While implementation is still a work in progress, more and more publishers are pushing aggressively into pay-per-call in print. One question Campbell faces is the degree to which publishers will want to bring in an outside sales team or will choose to fully integrate PPC into their operations. In either scenario, there is a need for expertise is designing and implementing new ways of selling directional media advertising.

Marchex has announced the launch of Marchex Connect 2.0, an updated version of its private-labeled local ad platform that is used by local ad resellers such as AT&T and Yellowpages.com.

The new version’s highlights include integration of call tracking (from the company’s VoiceStar subsidiary) and a new templatized landing page offering that can be customized and integrated with search marketing campaigns. These features are also meant to appeal to businesses that don’t have Web sites, enabling them to either get online in an easy way or have phone leads delivered to them rather than clicks. Both factors are common among service-based businesses.

“Calls are the currency that small businesses want,” says Leigh McMillan, senior vice president of marketing, echoing the stated reasons we heard when Marchex bought VoiceStar (and when AT&T bought Ingenio last November).

The new additions together also represent a move toward giving the platform wider appeal among not only resellers and IYPs, but also any national organization that can deploy a local ad platform to a large group of localized constituents or franchises. In this way, the many components to the platform can be customized for each reseller.

“A lot of focus on resellers tends to be on Yellow Pages publishers,” says McMillan, “but there is more than that, and the way we have put this platform together — to serve it as a whole or a la carte — can serve any number of resellers.”

The deal Marchex did with Cobalt in the auto vertical is a good example of this, and the platform can be likewise applied to a number of verticals. A national company like Roto-Rooter, for example, could use it to scale an ad platform across many local affiliates (insurance agencies also come to mind). Here, landing pages, which are templatized but unique to different locations, can be attractive (example below).

Along with this launch, the company will organize its VoiceStar and TrafficLeader subsidiaries into one business unit called Digital Platform Group. This will provide ad campaign management as well as consulting and sales channel training for its resellers. This follows the launch of Marchex’s AdHere pay-per-click platform last month, which similarly sought to unify some of its business units under one digestible product and advertiser brand.

“This is the second phase of our brand streamlining,” says McMillan.

We thought there must be a reason why VoiceStar, Marchex’s pay-per-call unit, had such a prominent presence at the North American Dealer Association show in February. Now we know: The company has just formed a reseller partnership with The Cobalt Group, which provides services to 40 percent of U.S. auto dealers.

Internet marketing solutions are increasingly important, but “dealers are adamant about making their phones ring,” pitches VoiceStar President Ari Jacoby. Under the new deal, they’ll have “tens of thousands of custom, trackable phone numbers to use in offline and online campaigns. They’ll also have ads for the pay-per-call services placed across several search engines and Web sites.

Cobalt’s emphasis on driving trackable phone calls gibes with a new Kelsey Group survey of auto dealers and their use of new media. When it comes to calls to the dealer, the top-line finding was that 51 percent come from classifieds, 48 percent from Internet Yellow Pages and 33 percent from e-mail.

In a significant development, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com is replacing Yahoo! Local Search for AT&T’s broadband and Internet customers. It is a move that will greatly enhance Yellowpages.com’s position in the space. The company recently told analysts it expects to attract 2 billion searches in 2008 and 3 billion by 2010.

The move is part of a broad multi-year reworking of AT&T’s existing deal with Yahoo! that gives Yahoo! $300 million to $400 million in upfront cash, according to analysts interviewed by paidContent.

It replaces a previous deal that was primarily based on providing Yahoo! with a share of every AT&T broadband user for a co-branded AT&T/Yahoo! portal and sell through of premium services – an arrangement that AT&T has publicly chafed at.

According to published reports, the previous deal brought Yahoo! roughly $300 million in high margin cash flow. A complete collapse of the deal was unlikely, but the renegotiated terms reflect AT&T’s strong position in the company’s many markets like wireless, directories, and increasingly, the Internet.

AT&T is clearly focused on building up its own portal efforts. The new deal will have a portal “powered by Yahoo!.” With the Yahoo! deal completed, it is adding access to its portal and e-mail for all AT&T customers, not just AT&T Internet customers.

The news comes at an interesting time. Last week, the wireless spectrum bids were due and AT&T will clearly be a contender. Further, Google is rumored to benefit substantially from increased mobile traffic from the iPhone available exclusive through AT&T Wireless.

It is unclear if the deal essentially cuts Yahoo! out of being a local search destination site for AT&T customers. In an environment where top portal and search brands are recipients of mobile usage, that seems unlikely. Regardless, it gives Yahoo! more opportunity to sell display and search advertising throughout the AT&T network. It is something that could have strong dividends as Yahoo! battles directly with Google and others. No doubt, retaining tight control of the carrier deck will allow AT&T to steer traffic accordingly.

It is of no small coincidence that last month, AT&T reworked corporate branding to reflect the company’s intended direction. What was once “AT&T Advertising & Publishing” is now being touted at “AT&T Advertising & Search.” The merger between Yellowpages.com and Ingenio, a $250 million transaction, confirms our belief that AT&T is moving the company toward a fully integrated cross-channel marketing company.

It also extends the reach of the Yahoo! portal to the old BellSouth territories recently integrated into AT&T, and extends Yahoo!’s content beyond the desktop to mobile as well – something that will be much more important over time.

According to paidContent, Yahoo! may see declines over $150 million to $200 million in revenue due to the deal’s restructuring. But there clearly is also plenty of upside if Yahoo!’s advertising is widely used, and mobile develops as strongly as anticipated.

We have speculated for some time that AT&T is a natural fit for Yahoo! in terms of an eventual merger or sale. While this news doesn’t sway us one way or another, we do believe these two companies are moving closer together and an eventual marriage of some type is more than a remote possibility.

(This post was co-written by Matthew Booth and Peter Krasilovsky.)

 has bet heavily on building a voice search platform for telecom carriers, Yellow Pages publishers and other providers of ad-supported directory assistance. Now the 150-person company, partially owned by YPG and just listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, has enhanced its mission with a series of acquisitions. These include BTS Logic, an international directory assistance company, and Phone Spots, which delivers advanced mobile data services tied to Yellow Pages and DA searches — including advertising.

“Voice is the ultimate user interface,” says Call Genie CEO Mike Durance. “But data is important as well. Our goal is to deliver content and targeting information that reflects our users’ lifestyle. Together, these assets are more powerful.”

With the acquisitions, Durance says the company has moved from being “just” a voice-enabled Yellow Pages solution to a much more dominant mobile search company. “The applications are truly intermingled with a broad reach,” he says, noting that the company now provides 31 different services, including paid 411, information portals, vanity Yellow Pages numbers, vanity newspaper numbers and classifieds.

While Call Genie is looking in new directions, its core business — Enhanced Voice Directory — continues to build. As my colleague Michael Taylor reports below, AT&T has announced that its directory assistance in the nine-state BellSouth region will launch a business category search product in 2008 using Call Genie’s EVD.

While the other telcos have divested their Yellow Pages units, AT&T maintains that there is real synergy in pursuing a three-screen strategy. Rather than selling the YP unit and using the proceeds to build out its network, a la Verizon, AT&T is betting that there is a home field advantage in keeping its landline, mobile and U-verse video customers intact, and selling advertising — especially local advertising — across the digital channels.

It is a big bet. U-verse apparently has had start-up pains in an intensely competitive video marketplace. And mobile advertising obviously needs to be very sensitively handled. AT&T could always change course and spin out the YP unit. But for now, I like the ambition of it all.

Speaking at its 2007 analyst conference, Ray Wilkins, group president of diversified businesses, said his revenues are $600 million today, but that he hopes to see $1.5 billion in non-print advertising revenues by 2010. Yellowpages.com, especially, is the core of the opportunity, since it represents a giant umbrella for all the products. It is expected to get 30 percent revenue growth CAGR over the three-year period.

The basis for these projections is integrated sales from the YP sales force, a boost in searches from 2 billion to 3 billion, the integration of Ingenio’s Pay-Per-Call platform and the general growth from search revenues, especially on the mobile side. Wilkins noted that 18 million wireless handsets will be pre-installed for AT&T mobile search next year, and enabled in 20 million others. By the end of the year, he said, digital ad insertion will begin in U-verse homes.

Idearc has announced another distribution deal aimed at satisfying SMB demand for performance-based advertising on Superpages.com.

The latest deal involved Findology, a California-based company that operates the Zipcodez.com local search engine. Idearc will now place its PFP advertisers on the Zipcodez.com site. According to the press release, Zipcodez serves “3 billion searches per month.”

This deal continues a pattern of deals from Idearc to build its distribution platform, via small and large partnerships or acquisitions. At the top of this list is the September acquisition of Switchboard from InfoSpace. Other smaller deals in the same vein include agreements with YellowUSA.com, Intellistrand, WhitePages.com and others, plus its acquisition of LocalSearch.com from American Town Networks.

On Idearc’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Kathy Harless asserted that, “Throughout the year, we have discussed with you the three distinct components to Internet local search that are required to succeed — content, technology and traffic. We have consistently advanced on each of these areas with a laser focus on traffic.”

Out of curiosity, I tried a few searches on Zipcodez using my local ZIP code (in suburban Chicago) and the results were mixed. Searches for “office supplies,” “plumbers,” and “heating and air conditioning” turned up zero results (except sponsored links and listings), while “restaurants” returned a limited set of listings that appeared to be accurate and all of which linked to Yelp listings with reviews. A search for “coffee” included several local coffee spots, as well as a local car dealer. These also all linked to Yelp listings with reviews. The site did return reasonable search results in these categories for a ZIP code on Chicago’s Near North Side. These results also link to Yelp pages for the listed businesses.

       

Blog: Local Media Blog, Paid Search, Pay Per Call, User-Generated Content, Yellow Pages, Internet
Posted by: Charles Laughlin at 10:40 am - Comments (0)