Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo & Google Testing Pay-Per-Call Ads
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."
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
This is a dupe, folks.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
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
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.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
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.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
I cannot remember a single dupe that hasn't been posted by Zonk.
Neve Campbell picks up phone, and hears Google operator ask in a scary voice, "What's your favourite scary movie?".
In Soviet Russia, ads click you? (sorry)
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
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" 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.
--
make install -not war
and we can talk to their robot telephone operator.
superman runs linux
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
The constitution doesn't affect people. It restricts the government, not Google.
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
which is exactly the same story. if you want to do proper journalism then put some effort into it.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
Better yet, by clicking the link the customer receives only driving directions to the store... in Peru. Talk about devotion.
[You insenstive clod! I live in Peru! -- ed.]
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I couldn't disagree more with Mr. Baker's viewpoint. Sounds to me like he has never had the privilege of submitting rebates himself! His statement "very few [Rebates] are rejected", is not in touch with what is really going on in the consumer arena. One example; I have shopped on black Friday for four straight years and out of an average 15 rebates per outing that I've filled out, each time I had three rebated rejected. Three rebates! That's a 20 percent rejection rate! I followed all the guidelines on each rebate too, copied everything, mailed them the day after the purchase, and even went as far as to purchase delivery confirmation on several of the submissions. And still I ended up with rejections! I can't imagine what the average Joe who doesn't have a copy machine and doesn't double check his rebates goes through. Through lengthy correspondence with the companies and re-submitting the rebates (with copies of the original material I sent), I was able to resolve all but one of the rebate rejections. The one which I never got was *drum roll please* a $20 CompUSA rebate, which by the way, I sent two resubmissions for. Both times I contacted the company a month after I mailed the resubmissions, and both times I was informed that they had never received the letters. When I finally told them I was able to produce delivery confirmation for the last mailing, they said the resubmission deadline was up and to "have a nice day". *click*. I wasn't going to spend $50 to file a claim so I didn't pursue it any further. This year I did all my shopping at Staples, which, as mentioned, has the "Easy Rebate" system for almost all rebate purchases at the store. It's nice not having to send in forms and UPCs that can get "lost"; now they have no excuse as to why they can't fill my rebate! I advise skipping stores like CompUSA which have shady rebate (and retail!) practices.
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.
Sure glad this hasn't been covered before!
$0.02 (CDN)
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.
From Google's FAQ about the service:
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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?
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Slashdot Testing Dupe-Detection-Algorith; fails
Sorry, I couldn't resist
What? Yahoo gets first billing over Google in a /. article?? Say it ain't so!
really 867993
Karma schkarma
This would be fscking perfect for playing pranks on someone. Keep entering some arsehead's number repeatedly so Google rings their phone off the hook! >:-D
> Google then dials the user, who hears ringing until the merchant answers.
Screw that. Let the merchant hear ringing until the user answers.
I'm sick of THESE dupes.
You know what's fifty times worse than reading dupe stories? Reading frickin' "This is a dupe!" posts. If I had some mod points right now, you'd all be modded down -1 as trolls. Jesus, if a story's posted twice, why can't people just fickin' ignore it!?
Oh yeah, because complaining about how a story isn't very useful or entertaining is so useful and entertaining, right?
sigh...
Previously reported on this site:
0 3&tid=217&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/23362
I'm sick of THESE dupes.
You know what's fifty times worse than reading dupe stories? Reading frickin' "This is a dupe!" posts. If I had some mod points right now, you'd all be modded down -1 as trolls. Jesus, if a story's posted twice, why can't people just fickin' ignore it!?
Oh yeah, because complaining about how a story isn't very useful or entertaining is so useful and entertaining, right?
sigh... Dammit, now I'm a troll. You people suck.
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.
Maybe Alf will come back from Melmac to test this service on Earth. I would love to see him dialing up the telemarketers!
*checks watch*
take your own advice and just ignore people who aren't ignoring dupes, you silly man. you make yourself sound -so- put upon.
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 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.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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? Yeah, uh, we have those but you don't want that you want this other unrelated thing my manager told me to push this week.
Eh, whatever, like I have a choice in the matter. I'll never use this garbage and kudos to google if they've found yet another genius product. I'm just a jaded asshole anyway
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 on the advertisers dime all day long!
NT
Ummm.... Yeah. WTF is it man?!?! I read this post, then thought about it, and then came back to reply to it... Initially I thought it was dildos or something, but I realized it could be so many damn things. Is it Guns, drugs, child pornography, pictures of Liza Minelli taking a shit or WTF? God damn.
The company I work for is looking at using this for insurance renewals for home insurance.
Fred User sits at his PC at home and opens up his renewal proposal form, looks at it and decides that he hasn't a clue were to list his expensive electrical equipment and is about to give up when he notices the "call me" button. Clicking generates a call from the next available insurance agent to his recorded contact number and everything is sorted out in minutes. Fred pays by credit card seeing as he is on the phone anyway and his policy documents appear as a PDF for him to print off at his leisure.
Saves us hassle calling him to find out what he actually meant to put on the form, we're paid and we save the cost of printing and posting his policy documents out to him, everyone is happy.
so we get to call them now?
Vonage customers who are developers can make use of a feature called Third Party Call Control to roll their own click-to-call service to let anyone ring their Vonage line.
Google will be at SCALE 4x in full force this year. In addition to sponsorsing the community run event, they will be present on the expo floor, as well as have employees speaking. Google speakers will include former slashdot editor Chris Dibona and Dan Kegel.
Use the promo code GOOG and get 30% off registration.
MIVA stocks is gonna drop even more!