Ingenio, San Francisco, recently added Local Matters to its growing pay-per-call ad network, which includes AOL Mobile, Infospace and other Internet services.
Local Matters, Denver, provides local search services for 20 yellow pages customers and numerous 411 service providers. Its AreaGuides.net Web site has links to 39,000 city guides and lists hotels, real estate, apartments, restaurants and other business listings.
The addition of pay per call lets Local Matters provide more revenue for its local advertisers, according to Local Matters.
Pay per call, a search-based ad model that lets businesses generate targeted telephone calls from their online ads, can produce better results than traditional pay-per-click ads, Marc Barach, Ingenio chief marketing officer, told DM News.
Talking to a prospect or customer on the telephone often is more valuable to businesses than a prospect who clicks on an ad, he explained.
Advertisers are willing to pay $10 per call on average on Ingenio’s system compared with 60 cents to $1 per click on average on search engines.
