from Media Post (http://www.mediapost.com/PrintFriend.cfm?articleId=268661)

"Findwhat.com Tuesday announced plans to introduce a "pay-per-call" service enabling marketers and private label partners to choose pay-per-click and/or pay-per-call advertising options. The pricing models are similar, with ads listed in descending order of bid price and delivered to the prospective customer typically as a result of a query. A key difference is that advertisers bid on relevant categories, not keywords, and also choose the geography in which they wish their ads to show: city, region, state and/or national. With the pay-per-call service, advertisers only pay when someone calls them after seeing their ad, as opposed to the pay-per-click service where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad and is transferred to their website."

I can see this model being very helpful.

Pay Per Call leads, IMO, are easier to convert then Pay Per Clicks.

I'll be watching this model.

Oh, for those interested, this was briefly discussed at the Search Ads Beyond Google & Overture - Live from SES San Jose (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=916) session.

It's great to see the integration of online search with an offline sales or support mechanism. This certainly provides the user with a more interactive (human being) environment to gather information.

I'm wondering about the international implications of the 800 number and potential language barriers. Is this for the US only?

I really liked this strategy:

A 10-10-10-10 pricing model

10 dollar annual listing fee
And, for each pay-per-call charge:
10 minutes of talk time over…
10 days—the customer could call you back several times at no additional charge
10 cents per minute over 10 minutes

Woow!! 10 cents per minute. That's not bad when most call centers charge around $0.60 to $0.80 p/min.

Too long to post the whole thing here; the full write-up can be found on my blog (URL in my profile):

"I attended The Kelsey Group's DD:ILM (Drilling Down: Interactive Local Media) conference in Santa Clara, CA during my time with KRD, and was impressed with the caliber of the discussions (and therefore, the attendees). The show was sold out (and then some), and the buzz meter was high.

Regardless of the buzz, there was substance to be had. I walked away with a couple of key insights into the minds of SME's with regards to local search (some confirmation of my own thinking and more importantly, some new learning). In particular:

1) PPC should stand for Pay Per Call, not Pay Per Click..."

yes
they said that its all about "Search results that deliver personal interaction between buyer and seller." I think it is a good idea to be more professional like their competitors and is less expensive than non-performance-based print advertising.

what do you think?

Todd Tweedy posted an excellent article about the Pay-Per-Call service (http://www.corante.com/goyami/archives/006192.html) on Goyami, a new Paid & Natural Search Engine Marketing Blog, covering Search Engine Marketing and Affilaite Marketing Industry News.

Ingenio's pay per call tech deployed by FindWhat is a sleeping giant. According to Alexa the pay-per-call page already accounts for 1 percent of the traffic to FindWhat. Converting these inquiries into paying advertisers should be easy for FindWhat.
FindWhat should soon begin the push for participation by the search marketing community. Search marketers might consider positioning clients in top keyword or category spots early. Competition will heat up for top spots in my opinion.

That 10-10-10-10 pricing model is cheap. A few days ago, I'm thinking they were waiving the first 10 (annual fee) as well as the fourth 10 (overage coverages). Now it looks like they're just waiving the overage charges. Still cheap, IMHO.
FindWhat - Pay Per Call (http://www.findwhat.com/content/advertiser/ppc2.asp)

You bid for placement on the call though, it'll be interesting to follow that... as well as to where the ads are shown (I'm kind of excited about the new deal with Bizjournals (http://www.findwhat.com/content/about/news/pressrelease.asp?a=168)).

FindWhat expands relationship with Verizon's SuperPages to include pay-per-call and PPC.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/041007/75201_1.html (http://)
:)

Whats the difference between this and simply putting my 800 # in a Google ad? Sure I can see the advantage of better targeting by zip or city for services that are localized. But what about national campaigns where this type of targeting is not necessary? I think that this could be a good model if it drives enough traffic at $10-15 per call. And certainly anytime you can generate a lead that contacts you, instead of your sales team chasing them it's a hot lead. I guess I'm just suprised to see posts that it is going to be "the next big thing". Not to say we wont try it, we will, nothing would make me happier than to see more phone lines lit up at $15 a pop.

Anybody out thier in the Debt and or mortgage market having some success with this?

Could be great for promoting a 900 number service. If you make $20 per call and can spend $10, great deal!

Find What talked this up big time at Ad Tech in NY.

We deployed 6 pay per call campaigns similar to our successful PPC campaigns that produce a significant number of leads each day. Unfortunately, we have not had 1 single phone call. Certainly, since it doesnt cost me anything, but $10 to set it up it's no big loss, but we were hoping to get at least SOME responses. And yes we use a unique 800 number to track.

Anyone getting results in the debt or mortgage industry?

Cheers,

Jerry