Pay Per Call: The Next Great Mobile Marketing Opp?

Location-based advertising; targeted video ads; interactive interstitials: the mobile marketing space is littered with ideas that are meant to make significant cash for advertisers. But so far, nothing has fully caught on to the point of massive consumer adoption.

But the opportunity is obviously there: It’s no secret that mobility is near-ubiquitous: A full 91 percent of U.S. citizens with a mobile device have it near them at all times, according to statistics cited by mobileFUSED. And that, the company said, opens the door for a range of forward-thinking marketing efforts, including pay-per-call.

How it works is this: When a user executes a search on a mobile phone, pay-per-call systems help advertisers with relevant products get in front of that consumer with a targeted ad meant to urge the user to initiate a call.

The advertiser usually works with affiliate marketers and lead generation partners that are responsible for setting up the campaign and screening inbound calls for potential customers. The advertiser only pays the affiliates for valid calls that meet a certain criteria.

“Do not miss out on the opportunity to directly communicate to your customers through the units that are almost constantly glued to the palm of their hands,” said Curt Denny, a spokesperson for mobileFUSED. “Mobile marketing is not only valuable for your business but essentially critical to compete in today's industries. At this point, it is not what you are doing, but what you aren’t doing. There are so many competing organizations that it is a near certainty that at least one of your competitors is making these efforts.”

mobileFUSED, which specializes in this type of campaign, sets out a range of statistics to back up its approach. Desktop usage is falling; BIA Kelsey claims mobile queries will trump them by 27.8 billion in the U.S. by 2016. And, according to Google Mobile Playbook, it turns out that approximately 70% of mobile searches for local businesses and services turn into phone calls. Also, 64 percent of smartphone users are shopping online with their devices, according to eDigitalResearch, while customers who use a phone are 10 times as likely to purchase as those that do desktop searches.

“So, as you can see from recent industry statistics, there are plenty of great reasons to get in on the action,” Denny says. “It is not too late to find out how you can improve your own numbers, whether it is for your business or a client's.”