PPCall Rumors and Other Stuff

I had a dizzying series of meetings with people yesterday at AD:TECH on everything from the future of newspapers (Quigo) to mobile local search (Nokia). All very interesting stuff that I'd love to elaborate on if I didn't have to run (for coffee and to my panel on search engine marketing for small business this a.m.).

One comment on the Yahoo! testing Ingenio PPCall ads rumor. People are treating this as something of a novelty/surprise. It shouldn't be.

Whether or not it's true (and I don't know), Yahoo! and Google (and MSN) will offer either call tracking or PPCall at some point in the next 12 to 24 months. The idea that Yahoo! would formally do this, I suppose, marks a new level of legitimacy for the product (after the Miva and AOL adoptions).

Call tracking has been around for a long, long time, even online in the vertical context. And there are lots of companies now actively using or implementing some version of call tracking in Local (Leads.com, ReachLocal, Local Launch) and/or full-blown PPCall (Ingenio, InsiderPages, JudysBook, Verizon, etc.). This product will just live side-by-side with clicks in the very near future.

No one should really be surprised.