I've noticed some Google Ads with direct telephone numbers to sales departments. This negates the need for a surfer to click and so the publisher doesn't get paid but the advertiser makes additional sales. Is this allowed? If it is it should be banned. What do you think?
Nothing in the rules that says you cannot put a phone number in your ad. You see it occasionally. The logic of course is that the advertiser wants the viewer to pick up the phone without clicking and thus saving the cost of the click. But people want information, that's why they use a search engine and want to visit sites to get that information. Having your phone number in the ad does not provide information and does not compel them to click and get more information (although that may be the intent). But who will simply call a phone number and say "I hear you have widgets. Tell me more about them"? It is a waste of valuable ad real estate that can be put to better use. Seems operation costs would be higher too with more people in theory needed to man the phones. I don't believe the result will be as the advertiser intends. The ad will be ignored because it does not seem to appeal to what the searcher is looking for and they certainly won't call the number. A portion will be attracted simply because the phone number stands out and click the ad thus negating the intended result. If the landing page is poor, there will be poor conversions leaving the advertiser worse off.
I agree, on top of that: 1) You may negatively affect CTR - meaning your QS will decrease = worse positions / higher costs 2) You won't be able to track the effectiveness of your campaigns as you won't be able to track conversions generated by AdWords - and if you can't measure effectiveness then you're missing 99% of the benefit of using AdWords
I disagree - some people want the immediacy of a phone call. I think Google should ban these adverts - they will make less from them anyway
If there was a rule against having your phone number in your ad, you could get banned if you kept doing this. But there is no rule against it. Should there be? That's a matter of debate. I'm not saying that nobody would pick up the phone and call. I'm sure a very small percentage would. But the idea of an ad is for people to click on it and get more information from your site, but more important, to sell you. That is more efficient and cost effective than wanting everyone to call you to give information and make the sale. Seems to me the phone number in the ad defeats the purpose of having a web site in the first place. In my case with a toll-free number, I pay for the call. And even as the sole owner and knowing my product very well, my sales pitch over the phone is never exactly like the last. That's why I want them to come to my site, read and decide if I can help them. Then I want them to call, not before they have a better idea of what I'm selling. Does Google make less money with those kinds of ads? I think so if my and JHardy's assumptions are correct. But that's what the QS is for. Brilliant way of weeding out poor ads which this tactic would do if it works: lesser CTR = lesser QS = more difficulty to get exposure meaning have to bid higher and if people click, higher cost which means you have defeated the purpose of the ad (as far as not spending advertising dollars is concerned). To be precise, Google makes less money for that ad. The better ads behind it take over and Google makes more money. Google wants you to have good quality, high click rate ads. That's how they make their money, not the poor quality ads. Figure it out. First ad pays $1 but poor CTR of 1% (let's say QS=5). Google gets $100 for every 10,000 impressions. Second ad pays only $0.50 but CTR is 3% (QS may be 7). Result is $150 for every 10k impressions. Third ad also pays $0.50 (say QS=10) but CTR is 5% which means $250 for Google. So should those kinds of ads be banned? No need because quality score takes care of it all by itself. Simple and effective automatic system.
We know how the system works, also it does say if you read carefully we can not include that type of information. Of course they are not going to be listing every single detail like no email, telephone addresses beepers or what ever else there is just simply no personal inforatmio to be givin out. For that kind of things you will get your ad deleted.
Could you provide a link or copy the part where is says that please? Not doubting it, just want to put my own mind at ease. I would never put the phone number anyway as explained.
http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-help-guidelines/browse_thread/thread/9bafa37d83bf667b - quote - "Yes, you may use telephone numbers in AdWords text ads. It is not against AdWords policy."
Well it is wrong then - publishers give adverts space which they can make little if anything from - don't suppose we can stipulate "no ads with telephone numbers" is it against TOS to call the numbers and give them a mouth full? Now, there's an idea for a PMT activity!
That link provided by Magda is two years old, so things could have changed since. Funny to see some posts there saying ads with phone numbers have high CTRs. Another saying that phone order outnumber online ones. I guess that could depend on type of product (physical vs downloadable). When I used to sell my software in both download and on CD-ROM, about 75% would buy the download version but of those buying the CD-ROM, only 20% would call to place their order. One problem in saying you whatever percentage of orders by phone is, how do you know how they found you, organically or PPC? If you had the phone number in the ad, how do you know they didn't click on the ad before calling you? Or where the ad was displayed for that matter, search or content network if you use it.
People need adds to get information, and a telephone number is an information. So if some want it to be placed why not to do that. However, I doubt if someone would call anycompany without visiting their website first nowadays
Advertisers can indeed be banned, I know some advertisers who spend more than 1 million a year and were banned. Phone numbers are allowed in the ad text, but how often do you really think someone will call just by looking at an ad text - they will always click through to your site, it only takes a second.