Changes are taking the pace…
And marketers need to catch up. Two weeks ago, Google announced to a group of AdWords advertisers that upcoming changes would occur to the phone numbers that appear in ads.
Well, the time is here, and DMN spoke with Kyle Christensen, senior vice president of marketing at Invoca, a call intelligence company, to make sense of the changes.
Yesterday, Google AdWords launched changes that will affect campaigns that use both call extensions and local extensions by no longer giving marketers the opportunity to differentiate calls driven from AdWords location-based business ads, and calls driven from other sources to their main line.
While the change will allow Google to test different methods of collection, it will present marketers with a heavy reliance on Google’s analytics, as well as a lack of call conversion tracking at the individual location level.
“For a practical example from a user perspective: if a consumer searches ‘laundromat,’ the number that appears in the paid ad they see will now automatically match the number that appears in the organic search results for that local business, rather than a number the company was using to track or route the call,” said Christensen.
The change joins a number of updates that are part of Google’s effort to create a more consistent user experience, which also included the introduction of a new feature called Automated Call Extensions.
“This feature impacts advertisers that do not yet use call extensions, but have a strong call-to-action to place a phone call,” said Christensen. “In these cases, Google will pull the phone number from the advertiser’s landing page and automatically create a call extension that forwards calls to that landing page phone number.”
The impact the changes will have on marketers, according to Christensen, will depend on a number of factors.
“First, local businesses will be impacted more than regional, national or international ones. Local advertisers who frequently show location extensions may start to see more calls going to their Google My Business phone number rather than their direct call extension number,” said Christensen.
On the other hand, for marketers with a basic marketing stack, or those that may be relying solely on Google My Business alone to manage their business calls, Christensen said these changes won’t make much of a difference.
“However, more sophisticated marketers using third party call intelligence solutions — especially those that drive a significant volume of calls from local search ads — will lose the ability track these calls once this change takes effect unless they opt out,” said Christensen.
Such impacts convey the limited advantage of Google call extension capabilities, forcing some brands, according to Christensen to adopt call intelligence solutions.
“If you use a call intelligence platform and fail to opt out of Google’s update, you’ll lose the opportunity to connect what happens offline during a phone call to the rest of the customer journey,” said Christensen.
