Google To Introduce Click-to-Call (Billing) in Ads on Mobile Devices
Google sent out notification to its AdWords advertisers that this month “your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
Click-to-call is old news at Google by now — the company first tested click-to-call ads back in November 2005 — but what changes this month is billing: AdWords advertisers were notified that their location-specific business phone numbers will display alongside destination URLs in ads on high-end mobile devices, making the call itself a charged ad outcome rather than a free extra.
The timing is pointed: the rollout lands the same week Google made its official entry into selling phones with the Nexus One, its first self-sold Android device, after launching Android a year earlier on one device with one operator in one country. With more high-end Android handsets reaching users, Google has both the distribution and the inventory to charge for calls.
First-order effects
- AdWords advertisers with location-specific numbers get a new billable format on high-end mobile devices — a phone call joins the click as something they pay for, which matters most to local businesses whose goal is a ringing phone, not a site visit.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers that previously treated mobile as cheap leftover desktop inventory now have a reason to write mobile-specific ad copy and budgets around calls, shifting spend toward local and service businesses that the click model underserved.
Third-order effects
- If calls prove out as a paid outcome, the ad unit stops being defined by the browser visit at all — the same logic that later produces buy buttons and other transaction-native formats inside ads, with Google positioned as the meter for whatever action the ad drives.
The trend: Mobile search advertising is evolving from charging per click to charging per completed customer action, with the phone call as the first such outcome Google bills at scale.