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

Hmm...

[Bun]

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.

Who says I have to use my own number?

[canadiangoose]

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.

Re:Who says I have to use my own number?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked at dynamicsoft (now Cisco) we wrote an app that would conference two totally random individuals at a time. With one click of the button, two phones would ring and each person would insist that the other had called them. It was very fun to watch.

Its even better when you anonymously schedule it to call people at 6am.

in...

[kirkb]

In Soviet Russia, ads click you? (sorry)

Balmer, its Google calling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Has anyone got Steve's phone number?

AT&T tried this in the early 90's

[klubar]

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.

They DO delete your number...

[KingSkippus]

From Google's FAQ 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.

Dupe

[zaguar]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/233620 3&tid=217&tid=99/

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?