There is a new feature soon to be released for Google AdWords Pay Per Click Advertising allowing advertisers to place a phone number below their ad. This will be an additional line, to the already overcrowded space. This means ads will have a headline, 2 descriptions, and a display URL. Optionally there will be Google checkout, Google checkout save $__, image results, and now a phone number.
What does all this mean to advertisers on the Google AdWords PPC accounts? There will be less space for the first page results, thus driving up cost per click.
With the beta feature there can only be 5 PPC campaigns per account set up with Google beta generated phone numbers. These numbers will be different for each campaign to better track results. Hopefully soon this will expand to individual ad groups within campaigns, keywords, and ad text. This is all something that will need to be implemented soon after the beta phases.
The phone numbers generated by Google will redirect to a company chosen phone number. This will track conversions, but how? That is a good question. Is Google only going to track conversions that lead to a phone call? If so this is inaccurate as a phone call does not always lead to a sale or conversion. I will be waiting for a response from Google to this question.
Currently there are two phases of the phone number tracking conversions being releases. Phase 1 has your phone number listed under your ad. People can call the number by reading your ad, but cannot call by clicking into your website. Phase 2 is where a user clicks your ad and is lead to a landing page with the specific Google generated phone number.
So if your company already has phone numbers set up for tracking PPC conversions then you should go with phase 1 (if you are privileged to take place in this beta testing)
About Brandon Leibowitz
