Pay Per Call Advertising

Pay-per-call was originally a billing system generally known as "800/900" calls (because most pay per call services used numbers in the 8xxx or 9xx range), whereby the phone company bills the caller for a fee which is passed on to the owner of the number called. Most often used for phone sex services, so the caller can be billed for the number of minutes they are on the line with the service provider.

In the very recent past, with significant help from Google, Pay per Call (similar to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which is the dominant form of online advertising) emerged. In pay-per-call, however, the advertiser receives a phone call; a majority of current pay per call providers uses web forms or optimized landing pages to help generate phone calls. On web based only platforms, merchants define their relevant key terms, choose their desired categories and decide upon the geographic area where they'd like their ad to appear (local, regional or national) From there, they create their ad, containing their company name, address, a short description and a traceable toll-free telephone number which redirects to the advertiser's actual phone number.This type of advertisement is now very popular with Yellow Pages companies.

Given the high rate of reported click fraud, Pay-per-call services are believed to be a better solution to connect potential customers to advertiser. The system is a virtual PBX hosted phone operation used to track, record, forward and account for every call, and captures all caller details – caller info, date and time, calling number etc. Calls can be automatically forwarded as MP3 files to the advertiser or the call generator. Data Portal where potential prospects are qualified by call center agents before being passed along to any advertisers.