Thoughts on PPCall - Pay Per Call

[jchap13]

What are your thoughts on PPCall (Pay Per Call)? Especially in the lead gen arena.

 

[jchap13]

Telmetrics President Bill Dinan argued (at the Kelsey show) that yellow pages publishers should shift the print directory to an entirely performance-based model, specifically PPCall.

The call-tracking company released data from its aggregated customer records to argue that the industry needs to adopt a performance-based pricing model for the traditional printed directory to be more competitive with online.

Telmetrics put out a press release that asserts that “yellow pages’ average monthly call volume and duration is still ahead of other mediums indicating higher quality leads”:

* Print Yellow Pages ads average 20.5 calls per month at 2.7 minutes in length
* Internet Yellow Pages ads average 20 calls per month at 1.3 minutes in length
* Direct Mail ads average 8.4 calls per month at 1.7 minutes in length
* Interactive/SEM ads average 6.4 calls per month at 1.3 minutes in length

Even though there are many PPCall experiments and efforts going on it print, it would be a radical move to go totally PPCall. Do you think that print revenues would hold up? What categories would grow revenues, which ones might fall?

Calls would need to be priced differently by category and territory or geography. An auction would take care of that and be self-regulating, but would probably be too complex for the bulk of YP advertisers.