The call monetization opportunity we’ve chronicled for the past few years varies across different audience segments. The Marchex Institute — a research lab within Marchex — has brought some of these variances to light in a new report.

Specifically it looked at financial services and insurance — both high value verticals that rely heavily on inbound phone leads to close large accounts. It examined more than one million calls launched from mobile search or display ads.

The top findings (verbatim):

— Mobile advertising can be an especially effective way for both financial services and insurance companies to connect with Millennials. Calls initiated from a mobile search for both categories index very highly toward Millennials, and also index highly for Generation X, indicating that both young groups are searching for insurance and financial services companies from their mobile devices, then calling them based on those search results.

–Spanish-speaking consumers have longer and more detailed average sales conversations with financial services companies than English speaking consumers, indicating very strong purchase intent. Marchex Call DNA, technology that analyzes phone calls programmatically, found that Spanish-speakers had more detailed, richer conversations with agents through a proprietary metric, “conversation switch count,” that signals in-depth phone calls. In addition, the median phone call was two minutes longer than calls by their English-speaking counterparts.

–Hang-ups are a significant issue for both local agents and national call centers, with hold-times being a culprit. 25% of calls to national call centers for financial services and insurance companies end in a hang-up (with an average hold time of 2 minutes) while 20% of calls to local agents or branches end in a hang-up (with an average hold-time of 1:39).

These are telling results, particularly in light of the trend towards mobile searches that lead phone calls (72 billion annually according to our data). That trend is pronounced within these demographic segments that are mobile-heavy.

So what does that mean for these and other high-value verticals that close large accounts from search oriented phone leads? Marchex suggests they consider basic changes to lessen those hold times that lead to a 25 percent hang up rate.

These are solid takeaways on the surface and there is still more to unpack. We’ll be doing that in the coming weeks as part of our ongoing call monetization coverage. Meanwhile, read the rest of the Marchex Institute report here.

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Our past aggregated posts on call monetization can be found here and our white paper on the topic is here.

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Today Marchex launched an analytics tool to better capture what it quantifies as a $4 billion opportunity for call-based mobile advertising. Call Analytics for Search is the newest addition to its mobile ad measurement product suite, and it targets enterprise-level advertisers.

The feature set (from today’s press release) includes:

— 100% keyword attribution from all phone calls driven from mobile search.
— Real-time conversion data using Marchex Call DNA technology to identify those calls that are most likely to convert into sales.
— Automated setup and synchronization with leading bid-management platforms, such as DoubleClick, Kenshoo and Marin, which allows search marketers to measure and improve campaigns accurately in real time.

This all comes back to the growth in consumer-initiated phone calls from mobile search.  BIA/Kelsey’s forecasts phone calls  from mobile search to reach 72 billion annually by 2018 — largely driven by smartphone penetration and evolving mobile user behavior.

“Click-to-call ads from search results has become a massive driver of incoming phone calls from mobile consumers to local and national businesses,” John Busby, Marchex SVP of Consumer Insights told us.

But there’s still a gap for tracking the source and quality of most of these calls. By applying technology to fix that blind spot, the idea is to give phone leads better attribution metrics.  And as call volume continues to increase, marketers will be more compelled to rely analytics to make sense of it all.

“In conservatively looking at our own data and the broader industry, we came to the surprising realization that while there’s now $4 billion being spent by marketers on click-to-call, there was not a solution for full measurement and attribution,” said Busby.

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BIA/Kelsey analyst Mike Boland, who co-wrote this post, will be a guest speaker on a webinar with Marchex at 1PM EST today.

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For the last few months, you may have noticed an increase in the conversation on this blog and elsewhere about call monetizaton. Sometimes referred to as Pay-per-call (a branch of call monetization), this includes charging businesses for inbound phone leads.

Like search marketing in its early days, call monetization is picking up fast. And in a lots of ways, it’s branching out from search. In fact, Google’s efforts with call monetization are characterizing and validating the opportunity to the broader market.

The reason this is culminating now is the growth in smartphone and resulting growth in mobile search. As we keep saying, mobile search carries a great deal of commercial intent from users. And don’t forget the mobile device is also a phone.

So the result is a flood of calls being driven to small businesses, and a greater appreciation for the value of these calls. Our SMB survey data shows that businesses very much want the phone to ring. So roll it all together and this is a huge opportunity.

We’ve tackled it with lots of webinars, analyst roundtables and blog posts. This culminates in a massive white paper I’ve been working on for the last couple months. There’s lots of research, data, case studies and insights from the top players in the space.

Aside from the “Pay-per-call” aspects that most people know call monetization for, there is are growing sub sectors supporting the field. This includes all kinds of things like call tracking, analytics, routing and even fighting nefarious areas like “call fraud.”

As a teaser, check out an excerpt from the paper below. It should be out in the next couple weeks and we’re excited to start engaging over the analysis. It will also be a key topic in our 2014 conference series, starting with our Leading in Local show next month.  Stay tuned for more.

Call Monetization: The Main Course
So far we’ve detailed the massive market opportunity in driving calls to businesses, and introduced terms like “call monetization” and “call based ad market.” But what exactly do we mean by call monetization, and what comprises the call based ad market?

“Click to call” — and its monetization structure “pay-per-call” — is the most common association with call monetization. Google’s work in this area has driven the phrase into the mainstream consciousness (as can happen when Google enters new areas).

Other local media and ad players are innovating in different ways to drive calls to local advertisers, including xAd and Local Corporation. More broadly, the interest and excitement around phone leads is even compelling companies like Twitter into the space.

Specifically, Twitter is testing a click to call button with a few of its brand advertisers. Using its expandable card-based format for multimedia within promoted Tweets, these call buttons will show up in similar fashion to “click to subscribe” buttons seen previously.

There are other components meanwhile developing to unlock value in call monetization, such as call tracking and analytics. There’s predictive modeling to determine caller intent and route calls accordingly — for instance to an automated system versus a live person.

These are all important and growing areas we’ll detail in the sections below. It’s important to see how they come together in a “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” manner. As these areas develop, they are fusing together in more holistic ways.

Pay-Per-Call

Pay-per-call has existed for years in traditional media such as newspapers and Yellow Pages. Dedicated metered numbers track and attribute calls back to a given ad campaign, or even a given placement within a campaign. Advertisers can often be charged per call.

Today, call tracking not only measures calls, but “call quality” based on variables like call source, keyword spotting and other factors described in the following section on “call tracking.” At more basic levels, call frequency and duration can be proxies for quality.

Pay-per-call has evolved in step with digital media like search. As noted earlier, search’s high-intent use case aligns with the consumer need to make phone calls to qualify purchase decisions. Search also supports and co-exists with calls as a “lower funnel” user activity.

But during search marketing’s tenure on the desktop, conducting calls was cumbersome for users given that the PC and the phone are physically separated. Beyond the tech savvy minority using Skype, there was little direct connection between search results and calls.

But the smartphone has since come along to fuse the search device to the calling device for a more intuitive handoff between the two activities. Hardware aside, the high intent nature of mobile searchers explored above drives higher quality billable leads to businesses.

This has all created an environment ripe for mobile pay per call. Phone numbers in search results and local apps like Yelp and YP mobile are hyperlinked to launch phone calls. Many of these apps have responded in turn by charging advertisers for calls driven from the app.

This can happen on per-call basis, usually powered by companies like Marchex or Telmetrics that work with publishers and advertisers. It can also be positioned as an incentive to buy into a premium subscription-based ad package that’s proposed to drive higher call volumes.

Currently, many online marketing and presence products (websites, social media, local listings, and email marketing) employ the latter. Call monetization in these cases happens in more of an indirect way through subscription service. Yelp is one example.

In either case, several models developing to monetize calls show high value leads resulting from mobile search, app usage, and overall mobile engagement. Analytics providers such as Marchex can qualify ROI in more granular ways, as explored further below.

The post White Paper Preview: Phone Calls: The New Ad Currency of the Smartphone Era appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

It’s that time of year again; BIA/Kelsey’s spring release of its local media forecast. This is broken down into its media components, such as Online, TV, Yellow Pages, Mobile, etc… The full forecast will be out in a few weeks. Today we release the first component: Mobile.

Part of the Executive Summary and charts are below. The top-line takeaway is overall U.S. mobile ad revenue growth: $7.2 billion last year to $30.3 billion by 2018. That includes search, display, SMS, video and native social (i.e. FB news feed ads). The latter caused us to dial figures up from last year.

Zeroing in on the forecast’s main theme of location targeted mobile ads, those went from $2.9 billion last year to $15.7 billion in 2018. That makes them 40 percent of overall mobile ad revenues, growing to 52 percent in 2018. There are lots of reasons for that, some of which are outlined below.

Lastly, it’s notable that this forecast release coincides with today’s IAB release of prior year online and mobile audits. It’s good to see accuracy in their figures, especially the mobile numbers which I believe due to parity with the figures I devised. Their $7.1B is just shy of our $7.2B.

To engage over these numbers or for a full copy of the forecast, email my colleague Steve Passwaiter. And we’ll be discussing these figures in greater depth during our Leading in Local conference next month in Atlanta. Email me directly for a discount code at mbolandATbiakelsey.com.

Executive Summary

— Location targeted mobile advertising — the centerpiece of this forecast — is included within total U.S. mobile advertising (see slide 22 for this breakdown).

— To understand the localized portion requires first panning back to the total mobile ad revenue picture. Here, BIA/Kelsey projects revenue to grow from $7.2 billion in 2013 to $30.3 billion in 2018. This projection has increased from our previous forecast (November 2013).

— Increased projections result from guidance from mobile ad networks and ad share leaders such as Google (33 percent of paid clicks now come from mobile devices); and Facebook (53 percent of ad revenues attributed to mobile, up from 23 percent last March).

— Google’s Enhanced Campaigns*, launched in July, will compound these factors by forcing mobile ads on search advertisers (default campaign inclusion). This will accelerate a mobile advertising learning curve and adoption cycle for all search advertisers, including SMBs.

— Enhanced Campaigns will also notably close the current gap between mobile ad rates and desktop equivalents (rates are demand-driven).

— This will play out as an influx of advertisers in Google’s bid marketplace for mobile keywords will naturally boost bid pressure and thus CPCs. There is shift is already underway, evidenced by data shared with us by search marketing agencies.

— The share of the overall mobile ad revenue pie attributed to location based campaigns will grow from 40 percent ($2.9 billion) in 2013 to 52 percent ($15.7 billion) in 2018.

— This share shift remained fairly consistent from our previous forecast, as the factors driving localized mobile ad adoption have remained steady.

— These factors include advertiser demand, higher ad performance for location targeted ad campaigns, and resulting increases in mobile ad rates (CPMs, CPCs).

— Other important factors driving this localized share include the adoption of mobile local advertising tactics (i.e. geo-fencing, click-to-call, click to map) by national advertisers, who account for most U.S. mobile ad spending.

— SMB adoption — a slow but growing share of localized mobile advertising — will likewise impact its growth.

— For national brand advertisers, the shift to location targeted mobile advertising will be driven by their natural evolution to adopt effective, increasingly available, and currently undervalued mobile local ad inventory.

— Innovation among ad networks and ad tech providers (e.g., Enhanced Campaigns) will provide additional incentive and impetus for this transition.

— For SMBs, the sector’s digital media adoption traditionally lags behind national advertisers due to lower levels of tech savvy, budget, time and human resources.

— However, SMB-driven growth is expected throughout our forecast period due to evolving SMB savvy and growing propensity to self-serve with offerings like Google AdWords and Facebook (pull).

— Also at play will be the accelerating mobile innovation, sales and bundling efforts of local media companies (push).

— As an example of the push paradigm, Yelp last month partnered with YP. The publisher’s 4,000 local sales reps will now be armed with Yelp advertising packages, which include mobile presence and distribution.

The post Fresh BIA/Kelsey Data: U.S. Mobile Revs Grow from $7.2B to $30B by 2018 appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In case you missed our webcast last week on call monetization, here is the link to watch the free on-demand replay. That includes streaming video, and access to the presentation slides.

The webcast itself was action packed with lots of data points, concrete examples, tactical analysis and audience questions. Ifbyphone VP Steve Griffiths and I went back and forth on lots of these issues in about 50 minutes of slides and dialogue.

The biggest data takeaways included the growth in call volume to local business that’s correlated to the smartphone era; mobile user intent for commercially oriented searches that drive phone calls; and the degree to which local businesses value phone leads (high).

Given those data as setup analysis, Griffiths gave lots of good examples of how Ifbyphone as a leader in call monetizaion is tackling the opportunity. We heard examples, best practices and things that companies in this space can start implementing.

The video is available for stream or download, and it captures all of the visuals (slides) and audio from the webcast. Pro tip: the WMV file streams natively in IE (given the Microsoft tie-in) but initiates a hefty download if you access it using Chrome or Firefox.

The post Surviving the Mobile Tsunami: Webcast Recap (and Replay Link) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The “click to call” button would allow mobile users to call advertisers directly from a Twitter ad with just a click of a button. Right now Twitter is beta testing the “click to call” button with select brands and no timeline has been given when it will be widely available. Twitter likely hopes the “click to call” will appeal to local SMB advertisers. Local SMB advertisers, such as restaurants, could tweet an ad to followers and include a “click to call” button so consumers can quickly and easily follow up with the SMB.

But how do SMB that use Twitter and other social media for advertising and promotion feel about calls as a leads source? BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™ survey, Wave 17 asked SMBs to provide a quality assessment of various lead sources, including calls. As you can see in the chart below, calls are a popular source of leads. The 66.4% full sample of SMBs ranked calls as a good or excellent source of leads. This 66.4% is actually the lead source that SMBs value most, ranked number one ahead of online forms (58.2%) and in-person (54.1%).

According to Local Commerce Monitor, Wave 17, 24.3% of SMBs surveyed use Twitter for advertising and promotion. When you dig deeper into the data and look at just those SMBs who reported using Twitter for advertising or promotion, the percentage rating calls as good or excellent drops slightly to 65.9%. For Twitter using SMBs, calls weren’t actually the number one source of leads. Calls came in second behind in-person, which was rated good or excellent by 76.1% of Twitter using SMBs surveyed.

Those SMBs who use a Facebook Page or Facebook ads for advertising or promotion, on the other hand, ranked calls slightly higher than the full sample, with 68.6% and 68.2% respectively rating calls as good or excellent. For SMBs who use a Facebook Page for advertising or promotion, calls were the number one ranked source of leads. But for those using Facebook ads, calls fell to third, behind online form (72.7%), in-person (69.4%), tying with email (68.2%).

My colleague Mike Boland is hosting a free webcast with call monetization provider Ifbyphone entitled “Surviving the Tsunami of Mobile Call Monetization” today at 2:30 PM.

Click here if you’re interested in more information about BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor survey.

The post Tweeting a Click to Call Button appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Click-to-call is quickly becoming a staple in online ads. Marketing Charts noted that “Google has touted the benefits of including click-to-call functions in search results, noting that search ads experience an eight percent increase in click-through rate when call extensions are enabled.” However, click-to-call success varies by industry, with the most successful click-to-call industries being restaurants, food and grocery, auto, telecom, and travel.

Red Lion Hotels is a prime example of the success of click-to-call in the travel industry. According to an article on HotelExecutives.com, “the addition of click-to-call technology to the Red Lion website has been a key factor in driving a 68% growth in the company’s online revenues.”

Red Lion’s customers also benefited from click-to-call. When Red Lion sent out its post-call survey to gather additional feedback about the click-to-call program, the company found that “13% of customers surveyed would have abandoned their transaction without the availability of click-to-call, 62% said click-to-call drastically improved their website experience and 70% said click-to-call was easier to use than alternative contact methods.”

In the consumer population as a whole, 17.3% of consumers have used click-to-call occasionally or often in the last six months according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor survey. Despite the relatively low percentage, the future for click-to-call looks bright. In Oracle‘s study,Consumer Views of Live Help Online, Live Help (which includes click-to-call and click-to-chat) is among the top three choices for customer support. Specifically in North America, 84% of consumers find Live Help an important feature of a website.

These data points combined with recent industry happenings suggest call monetization is hitting an inflection point. For example, Ifbyphone and Invoca recently received funding, Marchex continues to innovate in call tracking and analytics, and mobile leaders like Bandwidth are moving into the space. Much of this was covered at our December conference session. BIA/Kelsey analyst Mike Boland is currently working on an Insight Paper examining the latest trends in call monetization. Stay tuned.

The post Click-to-Call is a Win for SMBs and their Customers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Mobile website builder Duda Mobile is now just Duda. The name change goes beyond a Sean Parker-esque “cleaner” sensibility: It represents a broadened focus from just mobile, to now build SMB presence and functionality across all screens.

That’s well aligned with the multi-screen world we now live in, Duda CEO Itai Sadan told me. It’s also aligned with Duda’s perspective: Building mobile sites from desktop assets has given it a clear view of the design principles that work best across screens.

The new DudaOne product will offer just that by building sites on mobile, desktop, tablet (and soon other places like TV and in-car). They’re all built using responsive design, but importantly, Sadan sees the need to customize sites further based on device-specific use cases.

In other words, responsive design is just about how the page renders on different sized screens. That’s important, but there’s also a need to include certain functionality or calls to action on a smartphone (call business, directions) versus desktop (watch video).

“Let’s say a certain page is loaded on the mobile device,” posits Sadan. “People are more likely to be looking for an address for the business, so we’ll offer step-by-step directions and automatically optimize the navigation.”

This sensibility around meeting mobile user intent branches from Duda’s experience building mobile sites. In applying best practices of mobile-oriented calls to action (calls, directions and table reservations), it’s delivered high conversions for SMBs.

“Click-to-call is the number one widget on our mobile sites,” said Sadan. “We’ve generated one million calls to SMBs, 400,000 map clicks, and 170,000 clicks to our Opentable widget. That’s real value delivered to SMBs.”

Another important attribute of DudaOne is the ability to pre-populate sharp looking websites from the many SMB content assets already in place. Those could include older websites and the various content assets that are spread throughout the web (think Yelp reviews).

“[SMBs] have lots of existing content,” said Sadan. “They might have business pages or reviews or tweets. If they are a restaurant, they might have Opentable, or menus through Locu. We only ask them for their name and URL and then we automatically take care of content population.”

Monthly pricing will have three tiers including free (ad supported), business ($7.50), and business plus ($14.25). Each comes with graduated features that can be seen here. Along with automated content aggregation mentioned above, flat pricing has the simplicity we know to attract SMBs.

“We’re not focusing on the consumer market like many website builders,” said Sadan. “We want to address SMBs and their need to drive conversions.”

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