October 08, 2005
Pay per call with VoIP
Skype’s acquisition by eBay has led to speculations about using VoIP for pay per call (PPCall) similar to the pay per click advertising model. The manner in which eBay plans to use Skype for a PPCall service is not very clear but VoIP definitely has a role to play in the PPCall market, which could lead to further growth in the performance-based advertising model. PPCall can be used for offline marketing as well. This is of interest to small and medium sized businesses that may not own a website. Also, pay per call enables advertisers and business owners to learn from potential clients in a more direct manner as compared to pay per click.
In June 2005, a report published by the Kelsey Group stated that by 2009, revenues from leads originating from the web and clinched by phone will touch $ 4 billion. A majority of SMBs would prefer to pay for calls rather than clicks. The major players in the PPCall market include eStara and VoiceStar, which interact with the advertisers. Companies such as Ingenio Inc. and Jingle Networks Inc. provide free directory assistance service to its consumers. eStara, which is a push-to-talk service provider (P2Talk) has Verizon’s SuperPages and Amazon’s A9 online as clients for its hosted pay-per-call service.
VoIP enables businesses to cover out-of-station markets such that the prospects do not have to run up long-distance call charges. This is made possible by the local inbound numbers provided by VoIP that can terminate at the businessperson’s premise in another town. The VoIP network allows the PPCall vendors to log calls and report the results. VoIP has led to a drastic reduction in the cost of telemarketing advertising initiatives. This is because service providers such as eStara can access inbound local numbers provided by VoIP vendors, which is unlike the scenario in the past when a business would have to wait for a long time to get a number from a telephone company and the costs of connections to another exchange would be quite high.
Even though VoIP is important for the PPCall market, Skype may not give eBay an advantage over competitors as its SkypeIn service is available only selectively. Skype will help eBay to target its existing base of customers with relevant ads. On the other hand, companies like eStara are in a position to offer their customers a wider range of services including tracking responses to ads irrespective of the medium. They can track PC-to-PC and PC to landline calls.
--
Did you enjoy this post?
