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."

Comments

I'm on Dial up you insensitive clod!

[DoninIN]

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

We did something like this once with Bayonne

[dyfet]

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...

Private Callee

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Abuse waiting to happen?

[Sp00nMan]

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 :)

Re:Hmm...

[Alef]

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.

AOL had this first

[rayinla]

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!