I am not a fan of ads that have a telephone number right in the the text of the ads. I am sure some people call and nobody gets a click. Not me, not google. Why do they allow the advertiser to put their telephone number in the text of the ad? 2 of the top 3 results for "attorney" have telephone numbers. How does anyone make money (aside from the attorneys!) with an ad like this? I am seeing these on my sites. Why wouldn't every smart advertiser do this and get free impressions and all free calls?
Yeah, I've had these too. It does seem to go against the principles of the advertiser/webmaster relationship. Maybe it is against TOS. If it isn't, it should be. Darren.
From the adwords advertiser perspective: I understand your guys' pain, but honestly I hope that the people who see the phone numbers still click the ad. It is not my intention to vulch a lead, my intention is to provide as much information about my clients as possible. Typically I do not put the number in the description as it is wasting valuable ad text space IMO, but I will buy www.800-123-4567.com as my display URL. Going to the url simply sends the visitor to the corporate site. I had a colleague complain about exactly what you guys are saying, so I asked one of my clients to ask the leads if they had visited the site. All of their advertising is directly from Adwords/Overture. We found that a vast majority of new customers did visit the website, the only way they could have found it was by clicking the paid ad, which has a phone number in it. I hope that helps ease some of your concern, especially the concern that the ads get advertisers "free impressions" and "free calls" (I would hope that other advertisers have the same feeling I have, but I cannot speak for eveyone. I just know that it is truely not my intention to rob anyone of a click.)
I have suggested it to advertisers as well. It would be remiss not to do it in your ads. To me it is a means to bypass Google, and thus my surprise the practice continues.
i have seen miva doing this thing, but they do it on per impression and per click basis. 1000 inpressions with ph. no. no matter if anyone kilicks, calls or whatever per click on add, don't know howthey manage it, do they track ph. call or or click. they mentioned that you will only be charged if some one calls you. confusing
Maybe it has different policy when you enter your phone number on your ads? You pay for every impression instead of per clicks? The resulting ads do not show any numbers on my end, unfortunately. Isn't it similar to Adwords Local Business Ads? https://adwords.google.com/select/localbusinessads.html