1) Pay Per Call Goes Mainstream With Mobile: An increase in mobile adoption rates has lead to a more familiar mobile knowledge base that will drive pay per call programs, as opposed to the steep learning curve that initially came with online advertising.

2) Mobile Propels Pay Per Action: Advertisers recognize the omnipresence of mobile and the availability of data on its platform. Therefore, they are willing to track and pay for calls, QR code reads, map/directions downloads and any other concrete action that signifies a purchase is imminent.

3) In-App Call Tracking Rises: Expectations are that consumers will continue to create their favorite apps list and use them as a resource for purchasing goods and services, more so than mobile browsers. As a result, advertisers will track the impact of in-app activity on call volumes and sales, including social apps like Facebook and Yelp.

4) Marketers and Advertisers Shift to Mobile-First Strategy: Low ad budgets and mobile tracking capabilities will mean a market shift of companies that will create a digital strategy that focuses on mobile first, before branching out to other platforms that may supply similar metrics.

Last month, we reported that Telmetrics brought its m.Call platform to iOS, giving mobile app developers another tool to monetize apps where high-intent local searches are happening.

At the end of last year, we reported that the Toronto based�call measurement provider had expanded its services in 10 European countries. Although Telmetrics has served North America for more than 20 years, the company continues to reach out to the global local search market. Defining and monetizing the mobile marketing performance model will likely serve an integral role in that outreach.

In particular, AT&T underestimated call duration guidelines that led to customer-service issues. In other words, some customers were upset that they were being charged for calls that they did not think had any value. Secondly, and adding gas to the customer-service issue fire, was related to the number of non-relevant or “nuisance” calls.

Read reported that two of the changes AT&T made to better manage the expectations of its advertisers was to implement a better call management tool and also updating its program to offer a fixed fee plan in addition to its original pay-per-call plan. The fixed fee option was launched in April 2011. Additionally, AT&T has looked at this as an outcome-based selling initiative, which is more focused on selling the outcome than on traditional selling of features and benefits.

Right now the clients involved in pay-per-call are primarily print customers — around 65 percent to 70 percent. At this point, AT&T is seeing an approximate 50-50 breakdown between calls generated from organic traffic and distribution partner calls.

“Write once, read everywhere” concepts are popular ones with so many platforms to serve. Agendize is probably the king of these for listings and appointments, serving more than 66 unique platforms. Localeze and Universal Business Listings are other key players that come to mind for managing name, address and phone (NAP) information.

Other companies are specializing in other write once, read everywhere applications for such areas as classifieds (i.e., Travidia’s Bamboo Net). Now, for restaurant information, including social and mobile media, we have “SinglePlatform.”

The New York-based company was started over a year ago by entrepreneur Wiley Cerilli, with a first round raise of $1.2 million. Eleven years ago, Cerilli was one of several people developing Seamless Web, an online food ordering service that was sold in July 2006 to Aramark, the food services giant.

Cerilli saw a need for SinglePlatform because restaurants increasingly needed to post information such as specials, events and menus on a broad range of media — social media, mobile, directories, city guides, even games — and acquire new customers. Single Platform’s salespeople make premise calls with iPad demos that emphasize the need to create a “full browser” self-serve experience, rather than a simple Web site.

One revenue model that is being pursued is based on pay-per-call leads. Calls to merchants on the company’s dedicated number cost $1. The company shares a portion of the revenues with publishers that work with it. Cerilli says the company has already signed up companies such as Localeze, FoodSpotting, Menuism and Blackbook Magazine.

Today, RingRevenue announced it has raised a $4 millon Series B round led by GRP Partners and Rincon Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $7.6 million since its 2007 founding.

The vote of confidence was based on the value behind its call performance platform, which companies use to augment online ad campaigns. As we’ve written, driving and tracking phone calls makes a lot of sense for companies that convert business over the phone.

RingRevenue currently works with about 25,000 online publishers and about 10,000 advertisers. Its plans for the capital injection include improving its platform, business development and geographic expansion.

Google announced today that it will add trackable numbers to AdWords campaigns. Known as AdWords Call Metrics, this will offer advertisers analytics on call activity such as total calls per campaign, origin, time of day and duration.

The underlying technology will be Google Voice and unique numbers will be assigned to businesses. These will be inserted in their ads, connected to their actual phone numbers and tracked. Numbers will show up on desktop and smartphone searches and take the following forms:

Top SERP Ads

Right Margin SERP Ads

Mobile Ads

Unlike many call tracking programs, there won’t be a premium placed on calls generated or any additional cost to advertisers. This is similar to what Google did with its mobile pay-per-call ads.

The difference — besides a Google Voice unique tracking number — is that it now has a more robust back-end analytics dashboard so that advertisers get a clearer ROI snapshot through AdWords. From Google’s blog post:

Zac Stafford, Senior Search Strategist at Nina Hale Search Marketing in Minneapolis, MN, recently discovered that this was true for his client, modern furniture retailer Room & Board. Stafford saw some encouraging results as an early beta tester of AdWords call metrics, a new feature that automatically includes a unique phone number in your ads to measure the calls that you receive from AdWords.

“By cross-checking our call metrics reports with our sales records, we saw that half the people who called the toll free number in our ad purchased online but the other half purchased in a store. Before using call metrics, we determined our ROI just by looking at the online sales numbers. Now we have proof that online search ad campaigns drive in-store purchases.”

As we argued with Google’s mobile pay-per-call program, this will eventually integrate more discrete pricing. For now, Google is keeping pricing simple and free in order to lower adoption barriers, and also positioned it as a “value add” or retention tool for AdWords itself.

Additionally, it’s a good feedback tool for advertisers to improve and iterate their campaigns. In other words, like there is an art to generating clicks from AdWords copy and geotargeting, different ad groups can be devised that prove effective in driving calls specifically.

This is a feedback loop that could take some time to develop, and likely only see traction among savvy AdWords advertisers or agencies. But it’s nonetheless an interesting concept that will develop. Google is getting the ball rolling now. For more, here’s the promo video:

ZipLocal, the U.S. independent directory publisher, has launched a new “hyper local” leads-based advertising model called Local Leads that taps into a distribution network featuring 18 properties and 80 billion monthly impressions, according to ZipLocal execs who briefed us last week. The main players in the network are CityGrid, SuperMedia, Chitika and DiscoverOurTown.

ZipLocal is the publisher that comprises the former Phone Directories Corp. and DataNational. The two entities were combined earlier this year when Canada’s Yellow Pages Group acquired its rival Canpages.

According to ZipLocal execs Olivier Vincent and John Eliott, the model will be a pay-for-performance model with a cap, so local advertisers will only pay for qualified calls that their ads generate. The price per lead is segmented by category so an attorney pays more for a lead than a restaurant.

Vincent told us that ZipLocal itself has 700 sales reps and 200,000 advertisers. By tapping into its network of Immersifind (IYP platform) partners, Local Leads could potentially be represented by more than 1,700 reps and have access to 300,000 advertisers.

Clearly Local Leads represents an opportunity for distribution partners looking to monetize more local content.

Additionally, providing smaller publishers, those with just a few print books and a small sales force, with a viable online offering is another huge opportunity (one also being pursued by CityGrid). However, the challenge in training up small print-focused salespeople to sell a performance-based product cannot be underestimated. Given his background running independent directory publishing companies, Vincent understands this as well as anyone.

Interestingly, ZipLocal will use human operators, aided by technology, to provide call qualification. Increasingly, we are seeing call qualification as table stakes in leads-based models, either involving speech-to-text technology that produces transcripts that are mined for keywords or direct human intervention. This enables the provider to charge a premium for leads of certified quality while avoiding arguments about paying for worthless calls.

Before the Canpages acquisition in March, YPG owned DataNational, while Canpages and PDC (later renamed ZipLocal) were owned by the same private equity group (Hicks Capital). Immersifind, the platform provider developed by Canpages, was paired with ZipLocal as part of the deal.

The whole idea is to take the content of calls (obtained through recording and transcription) and “mine” them for information that allows advertisers to better understand the quality of the leads they are receiving through various media channels. This is done in a number of ways, including scanning for keywords that are associated with conversion. With a hotel company, for example, these keywords might include “reservation,” “credit card” and so on.

Call mining is the next logical progression for call tracking. Initially call tracking only counted a raw number of phone calls. Increasingly, calls were segmented by day part, duration, whether they were repeat calls and so on, in order to sift out lower quality calls. Now call mining offers the opportunity to bridge from pay per call to pay per action by discerning conversion from keywords.

Marchex (via its $20 million 2007 Voice Star acquisition) is one of a growing number of companies pushing into this arena. Yext is another. It uses call mining to evaluate conversion rates for its small-business pay-per-call advertisers. Yext CEO Howard Lerman touched on call mining in his keynote address at our Directional Media Strategies event last month in Dallas.

Telmetrics, a longtime call measurement leader in the Yellow Pages and local media space, is another company moving aggressively into call mining. In September, Telmetrics launched its speech to text analytics solution, VoiceTrends.

“As the local search ecosystem continues to evolve, agencies, publishers and SEM firms are shifting their focus from lead quantity to lead quality as it is key to advertiser retention,” said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics. “The automated post-call analytics that VoiceTrends delivers offers visibility into the cumulative caller insights needed to optimize media channels, distribution partners and keyword buys.”

The CMR firm Wahlstrom is among the VoiceTrends early adopters. Wahlstrom is one of the top five CMRs (Yellow Pages agencies).

“Our clients want details on the leads that our ad programs are delivering,” said Kathleen DeCaire-Aden, CEO, Wahlstrom. “Having the ability to identify a caller’s intent is crucial for optimizing ad campaigns and also shows additional proof of ROI.”

Yext CEO Howard Lerman, in the first of several keynotes at BIA/Kelsey’s DMS 2010 in Dallas, says that “dozens of winners” will emerge in the local marketplace. Noting how fast technology has swarmed around local marketing, “it is basically the Jetsons we are looking at right now.”

Lerman used the keynote to throw out 10 predictions. Among them: Directories will continue to drive the highest ROI for phone calls. He noted that Yext’s analysis shows that of 562,000 calls made in January 2010, 113,198 resulted in transactions, for a ratio of 20.2 percent. IYPs such as SuperMedia’s ratio was the highest at 23.4 percent, which makes it 25.2 percent more likely to close than Google, he says. Google delivers a lot of volume, but “has the lowest likelihood of phone calls resulting in transactions,” he said.

Another of Lerman’s prediction was that CityGrid will become the most important local advertising exchange. Its growth in phone calls in the past six months has been huge, he said. The average transaction ratio has been about 25 percent.

Lerman’s other eight predictions:

1. MapQuest will become a key local discovery resource, leveraging off its 50 million unique visitors.

2. Patch is going to explode, and will have enormous synergies off of MapQuest, which is also owned by AOL. Patch already has 105,000 high-quality listings.

3. Impulse buying will be hotter than ever, and Yellow Pages will seize a piece of the group buying pie.

4. Yelp will become the most important consumer resource tool and will continue to spar with Google on how its content is used.

5. YP sales forces will grow revenues beyond advertising, with AT&Ti especially well positioned. Mobile Web site, rep management and video will lead the way, making up for the fact that “SEM is not high margin.”

6. Microsoft’s Bing will become the second most important primary source of local advertising inventory.

7. The number of advertisers buying performance is going to peak. This growth won’t come from new advertisers; it will come from extracting more dollars from existing advertisers. The dollars spent will rise. Eventually, 1 million advertisers will buy performance advertising, but we’re already at 600,000 to 700,000, he estimated.

8. Google tags will become the standard local advertising unit — a prediction that fits well with Yext’s imminent launch of low-priced YextTags. It is ironic that the company most responsible for performance-based product will roll out a flat rate product. But Google  sets the standard for advertising products.

You probably heard today that Google launched a voice dialing feature within Gmail. This isn’t necessarily Google Voice (which is basically a call connection service), but rather a voice over IP client, akin to Skype, right within Gmail.

The thing that sets it apart besides integration with browser-based Gmail, is free domestic and long distance calls. The closest comparison is Skype, which is about $35 per year to call from a computer out to a normal landline or cellphone (Skype to Skype calls have always been free).

But what I like about this launch (besides that it is free) is what it could do for VoIP calling in the U.S. and its integration with search. Skype has already reached mainstream status with half a billion global users. But it’s not used as much by U.S. users to call each other or to launch calls as part of online experiences.

This was one of the caveats we mentioned in Skype’s forward thinking integration to local search results; there isn’t yet the mainstream inclination for U.S. users to launch Skype calls mid- local search. Skype subsidizing these calls (lifting the aforementioned charge) was hoped to push this adoption forward and it has.

But Google’s entrance to the space, like all things Google, could serve to further mainstream making calls directly within the browser. In this case, it’s within the context of e-mail … probably a good fit for peer-to-peer communication. But it could also drive VoIP adoption generally, by making it free and easy.

It’s also a driver get a headset — a traditional hardware barrier to VoIP — and have it hooked up to dial friends when in e-mail … or Skype numbers when ordering a pizza. Closing the gap between search and phone call has long been a holy grail of local search, but necessary hardware and software haven’t really been married (except maybe mobile).

As Facebook could potentially do for “checking in” after its Places launch last week, Google’s move today could be another early sign of the great mainstreaming effect it can have on consumer technologies. And its stylish 1950s promotional phone booths probably won’t hurt.

_________

Update: Aaaand just like that … it reached a million calls in 24 hours.

As the demand for dependable call-tracking tools intensifies in the SMB marketplace, WebVisible — the Irvine, California-based local online marketing provider — has unveiled upgrades to its portfolio of services to enable more focused ad geotargeting and greater call-tracking capabilities for businesses.

WebVisible has boosted its Geneva Platform to serve locally targeted ads for its clients across all search engines. CEO Kirsten Mangers told BIA/Kelsey that not only will SMBs be able to calculate their advertising radius across an entire city or ZIP code, but they can also “drill down to individual blocks within the radius to focus their marketing efforts on high or low penetration areas.” 

Enhanced geotargeting feeds into call-mapping features provided by the company’s Merchant Center 1.6, giving clients smarter tools to distinguish “bona fide leads” from peripheral ones. 

Mapping shows advertisers exactly where calls are originating from within their radius. The platform is interactive, so SMBs can then grade calls in order to earmark effective leads and block unwanted calls. They have the autonomy to say “what is a good call and what isn’t.” WebVisible then can apply its algorithm on the back-end to adjust marketing campaigns for more efficient bidding and targeting. And, as dictated by its SMB partners, it can also create alerts tied to their call blocks.

The entire suite is designed to, as Mangers put it, address “the elephant in the room” for call tracking and pay-per-call providers: distilling qualified leads from irrelevant ones. Easier said than done, she reminded us, because what is “bona fide” to one business may not be to another. Only when this issue is definitively resolved can SMBs, resellers and agencies all evolve to true transaction-based, performance-based models. 

Yext has already introduced voice recognition and processing technology to help merchants better understand their leads, a developing sweet spot for WebVisible, too. Mangers said it would enable the company to scan voice recordings for a deeper contextual understanding of how to handle these calls, which is pivotal in addressing online churn. 

Mangers also updated us on new partnerships that WebVisible is brokering. The firm has several deals brewing in Asia and is redoubling efforts outside the U.S. because “publishing partners are 18-24 months behind us in creating viable online products” (though many are ahead in mobile). It announced a partnership with McClatchy Co. in April in which the newspaper conglomerate plans to fully integrate WebVisible’s marketing platform across its 29 markets by the end of 2010 to bolster local sales.

As for location-based mobile services, Mangers personally is an eager early adopter but cautions against putting cart before horse until the market matures to a greater level of standardization in which reach can be gained through more aggregated, trackable distribution. “App-vertising” is an important future initiative, but in the meantime, it’s “back-to-basics” for SMBs, with some handy new tools in their kits.