WebProNews

The click to call model used by Ingenio to connect people to businesses represents the foaming surf on the onrushing wave of CPA models for advertising. Ingenio has been a fixture on sites like AOL and Local.com, but the typical visitor probably doesn't realize it. The company provides an underlying technology for what Ingenio chief marketing officer Marc Barach refers to as live search commerce.

The continued adoption of mobile devices fuels that idea, and quite possibly Ingenio's place in it. Major Internet players like AOL and Microsoft have made heavy pushes to the small screens of the mobile world.

Justifying that push means being able to monetize the traffic. Display and search advertising have a role, but Ingenio's model represents something more effective.

For an advertiser, the value proposition comes when someone calls via an Ingenio link. The caller's interest in the business has already been established. By virtue of searching by mobile for a local business, the caller represents a qualified lead.

Once the call has been connected, the advertiser pays and Ingenio collects its cut. The action drives this, not the search or the display. It's measurable and likely of greater value to the business owner and the ad budget.

By The Kelsey Group's 2006 Industry Sizing estimates of the potential pay per call market, 14 million websites look like good candidates. Here's the kicker for the business owner: about 10 million of them don't have a website at all, and 4 million only have "brochure-ware" sites.

With the ongoing push of Internet companies to the mobile world, we expect the value proposition of click to call to increase, as the market expands to $3.7 billion by 2010 per Kelsey Group's numbers.

Click to call has the advantage of being a dead simple, straightforward way to connect customers and companies. Simple tends to win over complex when it comes to technology, in many ways, and Ingenio looks like one of those winners.