Marketers Spent $4 Billion On Click-to-Call Advertising In 2014 — Report

Call analytics platform Marchex released a report today that argues mobile call extensions were a roughly $4 billion revenue driver for Google (and Bing) in 2014. However the company says click-to-call ads are a “blind spot” for marketers because there’s no keyword attribution available.

Accordingly there’s a good deal of inefficiency in click-to-call ads today. To address that issue Marchex is introducing a product called “Call Analytics for Search,” which integrates with DoubleClick, Kenshoo and Marin Software to provide visibility on which keywords are actually generating calls — something that Google doesn’t (and probably can’t) provide.

Source: Marchex (2015)

Based on Google statements and data, Marchex projects that in 2015 there will be more than a billion calls generated by click-to-call ads in mobile search in the US market. The $4 billion revenue figure comes from internal calculations based on the company’s knowledge of call advertising and a weighted average of the cost of call-based ads in a range of verticals.

Marchex also explains that 60 percent of ad-driven calls are generated from call extensions in the ad. The remaining 40 percent come after a click-through to a landing page. Phone calls from call extensions cannot be attributed to keywords today.

Source: Marchex (2015)

Marchex points out that many calls are not qualified leads. According to the company’s data, “roughly 80 percent of phone calls do not have purchase intent.” These can be repeat calls, customer service calls, wrong numbers, telemarketers and so on. Marchex thus seeks identify “good calls” (high consumer intent) and make it possible to attribute those good calls to individual keywords for improved call optimization.

Marchex says that early beta customers for the Call Analytics for Search product have seen profit increases and decreased customer acquisition costs. The company uses modeling and historical data to determine keyword performance. It also uses call recording and analytics to determine which calls represent “good leads.”

Source: Marchex (2015)

It then associates those quality calls with keywords and automatically transmits and syncs the data with the bid-management platforms to provide visibility into which keywords generated good calls. Marchex says it can deliver 100 percent keyword attribution for calls coming from call extensions or landing pages.

When I questioned the company about the accuracy of its data and technology, it pointed to advertiser results that the company says validate and verify its methodology. You can read the full report here.