Call-Only Ads: 3 Months In

September 25, 2015 By 12 Comments

Back in July, I wrote a post called Call-Only Ads Are Ruining Mobile Results. In that post, I shared data from a client who’d launched call-only ads, only to see mobile impressions, clicks, and conversions tank.

Based on my readers’ excellent feedback, we optimized and refined those campaigns. We turned mobile back on in the regular, non-call-only campaigns. We continued to work on bids. We were desperate.

Results did improve, but not to their former levels. Here’s an update on what’s happening with call-only campaigns and mobile in general.

Call-only campaigns have been live for about 10 weeks. So I looked at the last 10 weeks, and then 10 weeks before that, before call-only campaigns came into existence. Data here is for mobile traffic only.

Call-Only Campaign Impressions Are Low

impressions

Impressions ended up nearly equal post-call-only, but only because we added mobile back to the regular campaigns. Call-only campaign impression volume is less than half of what it was before. There’s no way we’d be able to even show up in the auction to generate clicks if we stuck with call-only campaigns, much less generate conversions from call-only.

Call-Only CPCs Are High

cpc

Yikes, check that out. CPCs for call-only are 58% higher than mobile CPCs were before. And this is with our bid management software attempting to keep call-only CPC down. It’s crazy to me that CPCs have gone up this much. Then again, this is Google we’re talking about….

CPAs More Than Doubled

cpa

This is where it gets really scary and, frankly, sad. Call-only CPAs are similar to what we saw before. And that makes sense, because we were using call-only extensions before. Users didn’t have the option to click through on a mobile device – we wanted the phone call instead. That’s how call-only campaigns work, too – at least in theory.

But look at mobile not-call-only. Yikes. Since we don’t have the option of forcing a phone call in the regular campaigns now, we’re stuck with letting users click through on mobile – which is pushing up our CPA dramatically. And no surprise – while the landing pages are responsive, the call to action is to fill out a form, which we know people don’t like to do on mobile. Sure, you can call from the landing page too, but it’s not obvious like it is in a call-only ad.

And before you suggest that we create call-only ads in the regular campaigns, we tried that too. I was thinking we could force mobile traffic to the call-only ads and desktop to the regular ads. But it didn’t work that way. The call-only ads got virtually no impressions while the regular ads got tons, even from mobile. There seems to be no way to get this thing to work the way it did before.

So, by all appearances we’re stuck. Mobile is hugely important to this client, so we can’t just shut it off. Using call-only campaigns killed our impressions, clicks, and conversions. And adding mobile back to regular campaigns killed our CPA. We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. It’s a no-win situation.

Have any of you been able to find success with call-only campaigns at a good CPA? Is this yet another conspiracy by Google to improve mobile CPC? Have you found any hacks that work? Share in the comments!

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5 Resources For Mobile PPC

April 18, 2014 By 1 Comment

Recently, I had the pleasure of appearing on my good friend David Szetela’s recently revived podcast, PPC Rockstars. We chatted about many things: my band geekiness, speculation on Google’s upcoming April 22 annoucement, and much more. You can check out the episode in the Webmaster Radio archives here (it should be live later today).

We talked a lot about mobile PPC and what advertisers should be doing with mobile. Listen to the episode for many of our expert tips. Here are a few additional resources that you can use to help you on your journey to mobile PPC success.

Generating Local Business Beyond the Click on Web Marketing Today. I wrote this piece geared toward small local businesses who think PPC is too expensive or too expansive for their business. Yes, local businesses can succeed with PPC! This article will show you how.

5 Critical Factors for Optimized Mobile PPC Targeting by Joe Kerschbaum over at Search Engine Watch. Joe offers a rundown of best practices for any mobile PPC advertiser.

B2B Search: It’s Time To Go Mobile by me, again at Search Engine Watch. I’ve found that many B2B advertiser have been slow to embrace mobile. This article talks about why B2B needs to get on board with mobile PPC.

Do Mobile PPC Ads Even Work? by Dan Shewan at WordStream. This info-packed post, complete with awesome screenshots and illustrations, shows exactly how to get your mobile ads to perform well.

If you haven’t gotten on the mobile PPC train yet, these articles are your ticket!

What about you? What are your favorite tips and success stories for mobile PPC? Share in the comments!

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PPC Campaigns on Mobile Devices – Good or Bad?

March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday afternoon, I listened to a Search Engine Watch Webcast presented by my good friend David Szetela from Clix Marketing entitled “Segmenting Your Way to PPC Success.” It was Part 2 of a 2-part series on advanced PPC segmenting, and it was highly informative, which I’ve come to expect from David.

I have to disagree with him on one point he made, though. He advised all Google PPC advertisers to opt out of showing their ads on mobile devices with full internet browsers. I don’t agree with that blanket statement. My take on this, as it usually is, is “test it.”

Most of our PPC clients get poor results from mobile devices, to be sure. However, it’s not true across the board. One of our clients is an apartment property management firm with properties in 10 states. This client makes extensive use of PPC to drive leads for apartment leases. And they get great results from mobile devices in Adwords.

To be specific, click-through rate for this client from mobile devices is 118% higher than click-through rate from computers. (And no, the client doesn’t use Content Network advertising, so CTR isn’t deflated by content impressions.) On top of that, conversion rate is 7% better on mobile devices than it is on computers, and the cost per conversion is better.

Of course, this seems logical to me, based on the client’s target market. Their apartment communities appeal to a young adult demographic, and young adults are more likely to use mobile internet browsing. Also, it seems logical that someone searching for an apartment may be out driving around an area looking at apartments – and using their mobile browser to conduct searches and contact properties – thus generating a lead.

This client would have lost low-cost conversions had they opted out of placing ads on mobile devices. Like I said, this isn’t true for most of our clients, but I think it’s worth testing.

Have you placed your PPC ads on mobile devices? What kind of results are you getting?

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Filed Under: adwords, mobile PPC, pay per click strategy