In the age of the internet more and more business is conducted without human interaction. However, customers often need to reach a business on the phone, and mobile click-to-call is on the rise.
Data from BIA/Kelsey shows that calls to US businesses from smartphones will hit 162 billion on the next three years, a jump of almost 75% since 2015.
For those who make money from these calls, attribution can be challenging.
Those adding a phone number to their AdWords ads or running call-only campaigns have only been able to track conversions in a rudimentary fashion, that is only when AdWords ads result in calls of a minimum length.
Because this offers a limited view of conversions, Google has now announced imported call conversions. This allows advertisers to import call data so that they can attribute detailed conversion data, such as revenue generated, back to calls generated by their AdWords campaigns.
Senior product manager for Mobile Search Ads Amit Agarwal explained:
“You can also distinguish between various types of customer actions that you may value differently. For example, the travel advertiser might assign revenue amounts to different call types like new bookings, rate requests, service calls and customer upsells to a larger trip package.”
The data from imported call conversions can be used with Google’s target return on ad spend (ROAS), an automated bidding strategy designed to help advertisers realise an average ROAS that they specify across all campaigns, ad groups and keywords.
To import call conversions, advertisers have to supply a phone number, call start time and call length. Custom conversion events can also be defined, and for each, advertisers can specify an optional conversion time, value and currency.
Google says that advertisers are already using imported call conversions to make significant gains in their campaigns.
Insurance provider Nationwide says that “since including imported call conversions into campaign optimization, we’ve been able to increase spend on top-performing, call-driving terms by nearly three times. This has even helped us identify new keyword expansion opportunities from search queries we wouldn’t have otherwise found without increasing our investment backed by imported calls data.
