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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."
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
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
Quick! Has anyone got Steve's phone number?
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
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."
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,
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!