WebProNews

By 2010, the click-to-call ad market could be worth substantial money to the search advertising industry.

Little phone icons next to advertisements offer users a chance to click-to-call a business that is paying for that sponsored link. Upon receiving the phone contact information from the user, the advertiser contacts the interested party.

Search engines have their eyes on the local search market, and click-to-call looks like a steadily developing part of that. Google has been testing such a program, while AOL partnered with Ingenio last year for pay-per-call advertising.

Greg Sterling at The Kelsey Group sees a big market for click-per-call. A MediaPost report cited Sterling's analysis:

"It's a mirror of online advertising in general," he said. "If you've got people pushing the product to market, it's going to grow much faster than if it's a purely self-service."
All of the major search engines have been developing more services for mobile phones, and click-per-call figures to be a component in those services. Right now it is a race for companies to get more local advertisers on board with their search advertising services, and get those ads in front of mobile phone users.

---
document.write("Email WebProNews here.")

Drag this to your Bookmarks.

Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.