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Yahoo & Google Testing Pay-Per-Call Ads 108

Posted by Zonk from the do-i-get-money dept.
khundeck writes "'Internet giants Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are testing a new form of online advertising that encourages people to pick up the phone rather than click on a link, lending credibility to the 'pay-per-call' ad model.'" From the article: "Google is testing a variant in which users click on a phone icon and type their number into a box. Google then dials the user, who hears ringing until the merchant answers. Google says the service is free for callers even on long-distance calls, and it promises not to divulge the caller's number to anyone."
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Yahoo & Google Testing Pay-Per-Call Ads More

Yahoo & Google Testing Pay-Per-Call Ads

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  • Pete and repeat (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by stephenMF ( 547151 )
    Pete and repeat sat on a fence, Pete fell off and who was left? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99 [slashdot.org]

  • I'm on Dial up you insensitive clod! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DoninIN ( 115418 ) <don.middendorf@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:43PM (#14170767) Homepage
    Wait, this isn't a poll? I actually like this idea, when I'm at work looking for something in a hurry I use google to find a vendor that can solve a problem immediately, and that means getting someone on the phone who can A: Help me B: Tell me right away that they can't help me so I can resume my search C: Give me some idea if there's someone out there who can help me

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bun ( 34387 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:44PM (#14170773)
    Google says the service is free for callers even on long-distance calls, and it promises not to divulge the caller's number to anyone.

    That seems pretty empty to me. They will still have the information. If they promised to not keep a record of the caller's number, I'd feel better about it.
    • you really trust them to respect your privacy? it will get farmed in no time flat..

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Alef ( 605149 )
      Google are getting more and more types of information every day it seems. For now, they don't really have any incentive to do bad things with it, since it would destroy their not-evil-image, but if Google one day turns to the dark side it will make one horribly powerful evil company. Especially considering all advances being made in data mining.

      • if Google one day turns to the dark side it will make one horribly powerful evil company

        People acts as though Google being not-evil is some great, moral standing that they take. While that's partially true, it's also part of their business model. If people didn't trust Google, they wouldn't be able to do things like gmail - they just wouldn't get away with it at all. Furthermore, unlike, say, Microsoft, google users have essentially no switching costs. If Google search starts to suck (or you don't tr

        • If you read my post again you will see that I said something like that, albeit with fewer words.

          But who is to say that the situation as you describe it will remain forever? Already with gmail a switching cost is there. I don't know about you, but when I switch email address there are several hundred people and organisations that still have my old address on a business card or in some register, that I have no record of at all.

          • Already with gmail a switching cost is there. I don't know about you, but when I switch email address there are several hundred people and organisations that still have my old address on a business card or in some register, that I have no record of at all.

            Gmail provides free email forwarding, which makes it really easy to switch email address. If you decide to switch from gmail to something else, you don't need to notify anyone. Just set up gmail to forward to your new address. So, no switching cost t

            • Just set up gmail to forward to your new address.

              I could, but then I haven't really switched altogether. Google would still have access to most of the email I receive for half a year. And what about archived email, can you download those? Anyway, assuming Google had turned evil, what is to stop them from removing the free email forwarding service?

    • They DO delete your number... (Score:5, Informative)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday December 02, 2005 @08:22PM (#14171030) Homepage Journal

      From Google's FAQ [google.com] about the service:

      When you're connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked so the advertiser can't see it. In addition, we'll delete the number from our servers after a short period of time.

      I guess you could always argue that a "short period of time" isn't good enough, or simply choose not to believe Google, but that statement is a heck of a lot better than you'd get from anyone else, I think.

      Google has a good reputation; call me gullible, but given their history, I'm willing to believe that they're doing this to make revenue from the advertisers, not from selling your personal information.

  • Who says I have to use my own number? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by canadiangoose ( 606308 ) <djgraham@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:44PM (#14170780)
    Sounds like a great way to prank-call someone at all hours of the day. Heck, you could even prank-call people from your desk at work all without picking up the phone.

  • Neve Campbell picks up phone, and hears Google operator ask in a scary voice, "What's your favourite scary movie?".

    • Shouldn't it be:

      RRRRRRRRRRRRinggggg
      Hello?
      Based on your recent searches, we know your favorite scary movie!
      ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

      (Ahem, I'll stop now.)

  • We did something like this once with Bayonne (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dyfet ( 154716 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:48PM (#14170804) Homepage
    We created something like this many years ago with Bayonne, for a specific merchant that, um, had a certain high volume web business with customers who would, er, be rather concerned about their privacy, and did not trust entering credit cards over the internet to procure their, ahm, "personal use" products. They were once in the top 10 internet search terms, too...

  • in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:51PM (#14170820) Homepage
    In Soviet Russia, ads click you? (sorry)

  • Private Callee (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @07:54PM (#14170845) Homepage Journal
    Google might actually honor that promise not to share the callee info. But what about their cutrate knockoff competitors? The US needs privacy laws like the EU. You'd think that the Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" [findlaw.com] would protect our "papers and effects" against searches violating representations of privacy, but it obviously isn't. A new privacy amendment would be great, but Americans have been so numbed lately by threats to amend the Constitution to discrimimate against gays and protect flags that it won't even be seriously considered. We could try a federal law, and when that's not enough, maybe get the amendment to protect this fundamental right. Easy abuse of personal info in convenience features like this Google feature will set the stage.
    • The constitution doesn't affect people. It restricts the government, not Google.
      • The Constitution specifies how the government is to protect our rights. Those rights exist independently of the Constitution or any law. The laws, and the government, are created by the people to protect our rights.
    • A constitutional amendment would not have any affect on Google.
      This seems to be a pretty common misconception; the constitution limits the power of the federal government, but has no influence over individuals, businesses or any other private entity.

      So an amendment would keep the government a step away from your records but Google would remain free to sell, abuse, harvest and do whatever else they want with your "private information," within applicable laws regarding personal information of course.

      You were
  • and we can talk to their robot telephone operator.

  • Balmer, its Google calling. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02, 2005 @08:00PM (#14170883)
    Quick! Has anyone got Steve's phone number?
  • Radio and TV have done this for years, often a company will have several 800 (toll free) numbers, and measure each ads effectiveness by which number is called.
  • The first thing I thought of on reading this was "How long would it be till someone figured out a hack for free long distance?" I mean, if you can get the "ad" to dial up your friend in singapore, then you are good to go. It seems that in the past any service providing "free" dialing apps (tellme, etc) always turned it off after it was abused.

    I'm just waiting to use it to get Cingular to call itself and deal with its own crappy ppl :)
  • i'm sorry but however you write it this is a dupe. please editors have a bit selectivity then this! all you need to do is click on your own google story picture and you'll see slightly down the page a link to this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99 [slashdot.org] which is exactly the same story. if you want to do proper journalism then put some effort into it.
    • Maybe its time to give the readers mod points to mod the stories. Enough -1 Dupe mods and it drops off the front page.
      1. -1 Dupe
      2. -1 Roland Pipsqueak shill
      3. -1 Ad masquerading as news
      4. -1 Editor troll/flamebait
      • I think that's a great idea. I doubt the Slashdot Editors would have the balls to do it, but I think it would be wonderful.

        Of course, anyone who consistantly identifies dupes is probably spending too much time on Slashdot.
      • Yeah, that would be nice, particularly if we could set our weighting preferences with respect to those flags (like we can comments). Then all the people who say they like dupes ("Maybe I didn't catch it the first time") could keep their dupes, the people who hate them could block them.

        Similar with the the Piqueapafoisfelle (sp?! :) stuff, which I don't mind but really kills some other people. (although I have to say, don't think I've seen any stories with his name on it recently, i kind of miss it).

  • Advocates of pay-per-call, including some merchants who have tried it, say customers who call are ready to buy and aren't just browsing the Internet; thus, search engines can charge more -- $2 to $10 or even more per call, compared with less than $1 per click.

    By this logic, have them click on a link to print a coupon and then drive to the store to purchase the product, and they will really be valuable.

    Better yet, by clicking the link the customer receives only driving directions to the store... in Peru.

  • Advertisers who are serious about converting potential customers into customers don't want to risk by diverting the calls to Philipines or India, but rather have them here. If this model picks up their will be a whole new industry. No it will not work the traditional way by paying hefty sums to old sleepy telecom giants but it will be a IP based solution.
    • What can an American do that a Filipino can't? What does it matter if the person taking your call is 300 miles away or 3000? It's racism to think that a foreigner can't do the same job as an American, given appropriate training.

      Many Filipinos have spent time in the states and understand American culture. Unlike tech savvy Indian call centers Philippine call center agents have American accents.

      While the pool of Filipinos with good English skills not yet employed in call centers is starting to run dry, the

  • Sure glad... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by nettdata ( 88196 )
    Sure [slashdot.org] glad [slashdot.org] this [slashdot.org] hasn't [slashdot.org] been [slashdot.org] covered [slashdot.org] before! [slashdot.org]

  • AT&T tried this in the early 90's (Score:4, Informative)

    by klubar ( 591384 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @08:17PM (#14170996) Homepage
    When the net was still young to e-commerce and AT&T was still a force, they tried a service very similar to this. It was sold as an extension to AT&T's 800 service. You would click on a link, enter your phone number and get a call back connecting to the mechant.

    I don't think it was ever very successful--no one quite understood how it worked, AT&T didn't understand how to sell it (what is the flash in the pan web thing?), and there weren't search engines yet.

    Someone should integrate it seamlessly into Vonage or Skype to bypass the phone piece completely.

    The market will be stronger when PCs are sold with handsets that look more like phones, rather than headsets.

  • Why would I want someone to call me? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @08:29PM (#14171079) Journal
    Whats the incentive?

    Do they pay me to listen to an ad? Or is this a way to add my number for a product I am interested on some website?

    With sites like buy.com and ebay.com I can just browse what I want and pick my price. Its a little different from someone calling me and I have no idea who the hell they are.

    Also I do pay even for local calls on my wireless plan if I go above a certain number of minutes during certain hours of the day.

    • Whats the incentive? Do they pay me to listen to an ad? Or is this a way to add my number for a product I am interested on some website?

      Er, no. Believe it or not, sometimes people really do see ads and want to know more right away or even *gasp* buy the product. That's kinda what advertising is for: its original purpose wasn't actually to annoy people, though that is a reasonable enough conclusion if you've only ever encountered web popups, I guess :>

      For people like that, this is supposed to be a

  • Dupe (Score:3, Informative)

    by zaguar ( 881743 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @08:29PM (#14171080)
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99/ [slashdot.org]

    I'm getting kind of sick of all of this. A simple /. search (which, BTW, is the worst search engine on any high traffic site I have ever seen) for Pay Ads Google brings this story up. How about a little bit of journalistic integrity?

  • What? Yahoo gets first billing over Google in a /. article?? Say it ain't so!

  • Astounding (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Chemisor ( 97276 )
    To me, the truly astounding thing is that there actually are people in the world who click on these ads. It is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone would voluntarily call a telemarketer!
  • discretion.. for those who feel guilty about responding to advertisments.
  • google never fails to impress me with how much they are willing to diversify their services. while you could say some of this is kind of weird, at least google is willing to come up with original new ideas on how to advertise to people.

    i sometimes catch myself forgetting why google is worth so much.

  • Alf (Score:1)

    by msbsod ( 574856 )
    Maybe Alf [sitcomsonline.com] will come back from Melmac to test this service on Earth. I would love to see him dialing up the telemarketers!
  • *checks watch*
  • i guess you can always search for mouth freshners , then go on to give the phone number of people who have bad breath. that way the world would be a better place! :)
  • I think this idea is great! It will provide an alternative route when web browsing that may prove useful not only for typical web-surfing customers but those who may not be as capable to get results from the web as... hmmm... oh I don't know, maybe your average slashdot subscriber?

    Best,
  • I love google as much as the next person that likes being able to find what they want on the web quickly without crappage...but this just sounds inherently evil. How is this any different than listing the phone # on the click through add? Are you really more likely to call someone you want to do business with because you can do it (semi) anonymously? Who the hell are you doing business with?

    When I visit a web page it's because I don't have to deal with a (likely comissioned) salesperson. Oh you want what? Y

  • AOL had this first (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rayinla ( 935829 )
    AOL already has pay-per-call ads and has had them for a few months. AOL uses Ingenio's PPC call system and that is the same system Yahoo PPC ads are based on. They use a mechanism where a unique 800 number is generated that will hook you up with the ad your trying to reach (even if the buisness didn't already have an 800 number). Googles approach on the other hand is very flawed. As several other posters already pointed out you can simply put anyones phone number in the phone field to make crank calls
  • so we get to call them now?

  • Vonage customers who are developers can make use of a feature called Third Party Call Control [vonage.com] to roll their own click-to-call service to let anyone ring their Vonage line.

  • MIVA stocks is gonna drop even more!

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