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Marchex Harnesses the Power of the Call

Written on

May 13, 2010 

Author

Gavin Dunaway  |

ADOTAS – So I’m walking along, minding my own business, when suddenly my iPhone starts making a weird sound — kinda like a marimba. It’s not the sound for a text message, Facebook update or a new email, so I’m a little frightened. After I slink it out of my pocket, I’m confused when the screen says, “Incoming call.”

A phone call? Wha? People still make them in the age of clicks and texts?

They certainly do, and Marchex has found that inbound phone calls convert at five times the rate of clicks. No wonder the company has launched a pay-for-call exchange, a performance-based call advertising service.

Marchex believes the pay-for-call market is about to explode due to the huge digital supply on a wealth of platforms and innovations in technology that cost-effectively serve, track, optimize and filter phone calls. In addition, advertisers can now glean far more user information from calls including geographic and demographic data.

The pay-for-call exchange — which spreads across 50 offline, online and mobile publisher partnerships — provides both campaign creation tools and call-filtering technologies. In beta testing, average call conversions ranged from 20% to 30% while consumer engagement on the phone averaged more than eight minutes.

If the last decade of digital marketing revolved around online conversions via clicks, Marchex believes the next 10 will revolve around driving conversions through calls.

“Pay-for-call advertising is the natural next step in the evolution of performance media,” said Marchex Chief Operating Officer Pete Christothoulou. “It is the last mile for advertisers, literally connecting them to their prospective customers through the phone. Each iteration of advertising products and business models — from pay-per-view to pay-per-click to pay-per-conversation — brings advertisers closer to customers and the actual transaction while increasing efficiency and ROI.”