Google tests “Click to Call”
Searchenginewatch is reporting that Google is testing “Click-to-Call” advertising, something some of you might know from Ingenio, who are handling what they call Pay Per Call for sites like AOL. More about the Google implementation can be found on Greg Yardley’s blog, including some screenshots. The very good side of all of this, which is something I think eBay will copy a bit with Skype, is that Google connects the call automatically and pays the bill. If they get all their merchants to have a VoIP account, they might even be able to make them pay the bill very easily.
This is really the thing with eBays buy of Skype. They have full access to the backend now to do lots of little nice things with it. For example, a system similar to what Google now did in that the user enters a phone number, the backbone calls that number for the advertiser (or merchant that has his or her product on eBay in this case) and the advertiser pays for the call. Or you just provide it free for all, as Google knows that once the call is placed the advertiser will have to pay his $10 for the call anyway and at 1 cent a minute globally via VoIP, they can let them have a few minutes of discussion. Who will do that for more than 10 or 30 minutes anyway.
The amount of things Google is doing is starting to get a little bit scary, but hey, they are enabling a lot of nice things there and building a market that will be bigger than they are in the end. Good for all of us.