Search Editor Kevin Ryan winds up his column on how pay per call is coming of age.

Yesterday, I talked about how last week’s phalanx of announcements relating to AOL’s enhanced search experience was great news for a small California start-up called Ingenio that is responsible for most of the telephone-response-based ad platforms in existence today.

Today, I want to get into the details of how Ingenio works.

Ingenio provides a complete end-to-end solution for the advertiser with or without a Web site. Amid New York’s first winter blizzard of 2005, I went online and signed my firm up for an Ingenio pay per call account and found an easy to use service that took about five minutes to set up.

The interaction is simple and requires five simple steps to get up and going:

1. Create Your Pay Per Call Ad: design a search listing
2. Choose Your Service Areas: decide on geographic relevance
3. Select Your Business Categories: select up to five yellow pages like categories
4. Set Your Phone Call Lead Price: jump into the action auction
5. Choose Your Payment Plan: how much and how often you spend

The experience of setting up an Ingenio pay per call account was quite pleasant and oddly reminiscent of setting up a paid search advertising program. The real life interface shows easy use reports and controls for spending along with category selection opportunities. Although the online sign-up process was clearly designed for smaller advertisers, Ingenio will also accommodate big spenders with an email link to a major accounts email address.

From the outside, it looks like Ingenio will become the Overture of telephone response based search result advertising.

So much the same, so much different

There are a couple of differences you will notice with pay per call. First, phone calls would appear to cost a bit more than clicks. Most paid search sites offer clicks starting at around $.10 while calls start at about $2.00. The theory being that a call is inherently worth more. The operative word in cost structures here is “starting.” As anyone who has ever participated in an auction-based listing environment already knows, costs have a tendency to go through the roof.

For my firm, the per call category match for “Search Engine Marketing” was matched to Internet Advertising where the top position was over $13.00. Overture’s click cost for the arguably more targeted phrase “search engine marketing” had a top bid of over $15.00. Competitors populating the space ranged from adult entertainment affiliate seekers to Internet advertising firms on the per call side, while the per click phrase returned only search marketing firms. Translation: category to key phrase refinement for the per call side would seem to be in order.

Without getting off on a rant about “measuring your [insert ad format here] investment down to your own [insert return metric here] target," the cost question can boil down to one simple answer -- any blanket statement suggesting that per call or per click advertising is more effective or expensive without considering the dozens of mitigating factors (creative, online presence, purchase type) would be irresponsible at best.

More cost formats to come

Just as Ingenio will no doubt expand its service offering in the near future, the world of search will continue to expand its arsenal of ad unit pricing. Search sites are currently gathering data to determine if existing advertisers will purchase the controversially effective contextual listings on a site-by-site basis, with bigger discounts or greater restrictions on content. Also, the less-than-popular search ads that look more like bygone formats than search listings continue to get tested and evaluated. Search providers want to know if you’d prefer to pay for an ad by an assigned cost per thousand as well.

I have some thoughts on this matter.

Question 1: Should we be spending so much time worrying about cost platforms?
Question 2: Is it possible we should be looking deeper for innovation?

At some point, a tragically disillusioned, down on his luck, luminary might start to see the search world in a different light. He might go beyond the boundaries of what we labeled “Internet” and “television.” He might see the term “convergence” and think, “enhanced human interaction.” The pieces could possibly fall together and a whole new way to define search would spring into action.

Of course, this visionary would hire a business manager to run the inevitable newly formed corporation. The new bean counting head of Search Convergence, Inc. would then hire venture capitol investors who would in turn take the company public. A team of accountants would be hired to over-inflate the firm’s value. Later, he would sell his stock for a richly deserved early retirement right about the time authorities discover said illegal financial activity. As a reward for handsomely enhancing our lives, the visionary would have the next twenty years locked up with Martha Stewart types instead of the mansion in Tuscany and accompanying 20-year-old European mistress.

Until all that happens, I’ll settle for better paid response listings.

Additional resources:

Visit Ingenio

What’s Up with Local Search?

The Last Local Search Hang-ups

For the Love of Local

Search for the Rest of Us

iMedia Search Editor Kevin Ryan’s current and former client roster reads like a “who’s who” in big brands; Rolex Watch, USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Panasonic Services, and the Hilton Hotels brands, to name a few. Ryan believes in sound guidance, creative thought, accountable actions and collaborative execution as applied to search, or any form of marketing. His principled approach and staunch commitment to the industry have made him one of the most sought after personalities in online marketing. Ryan volunteers his time with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and several regional non-profit organizations.

Ryan serves as Executive Vice President at the search engine marketing specialist agency, Did-it.Com.