Google Bullish on PPCall?

John Battelle picked up a PaidContent post about Google product VP Jonathan Rosenberg's comments to a conference crowd. Among the statements summarized by PaidContent was one on PPCall:

Pay per call: "Interesting model. … Our general experience has been the more we show advertisers specifically the results we're delivering the more they spend. … I think we will see cost per call increasingly more successful."

This remark is out of context for me, so I'm going to draw inferences based purely on the post. But what's interesting is that Rosenberg appears to be saying two things: 1) Google likes PPCall and 2) something more interesting about analytics and SEM.

Google's push into analytics is in part an effort to prove value to the advertiser. For most advertisers there's a chasm between the impression and click ratio and the ultimate lead or sale. Paid search marketing, despite being so measurable, still suffers a bit from the Wanamaker "I don't know which half" axiom of advertising.

Call tracking, which PPCall offers as part of its service, closes that gap and really proves to advertisers (especially SMEs) that the Internet is driving real leads.