You can see Pay Per Call in action: go to the Touch Nottingham site and search for catering or electricity, or even medical insurance or loans and you are very likely to see an advertiser using the “Call Me Free” Pay per Call icon.

Here is a catering example:

This link then takes you to a pop up window inviting you to enter your phone number and requesting with a Call Me Now icon to get in touch with the advertiser:

Touch Local Pay Per Call doesn’t come cheap, with typical minimum charges starting about £5 per call and then rising for more competitive key phrases. You will need to start off by depositing in the region of £250, and then calls are deducted from your balance. Art work for the ads are included in the price.

Interesting? I think so.

Pay Per Call Advertising is big in the States, and it is heading our way.

Pay per call works by displaying an advert that are similar to the Google text ads. When the punter sees the ad they are invited to use a Call Me Back button, and the retailer can ring them straight back.

Rather than paying when someobody clicks on the ad, the advertiser are charged for each call they receive.

Benefits?

• It’s great for local businesses
• If they are motivated to talk on the phone, they probably want to buy
• Get them on the phone to answer questions and overcome objections
• You don’t even need a website

I’ll be writing more soon….

Just out of interest, Search Engine Journal nominated the best SEO blogs of 2005. The winner was Matt Cutts and runners up were: Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Roundtable, Technorati, JenSense and the Official Google Blog.

Google is piloting the delivery of their Pay Per Click advertisements in the traditional print press. The Chicago Sun-Times has been running Google Ads in what is known as “remnant space” or unsold advertising space.

By the way, Google made $4.2 billion in online advertising revenue in 2005.

This integration with digital and print advertising could be a great way to reach local markets – newspapers still have a very concentrated local reach.

Google have announced their Google Pack – convenient way to download a number of tools described by Google as “essential software programs.”

Google Pack includes both Google and non-Google products. From the Google stable comes Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picassa, Google Toolbar and more.

It also includes Norton AntiVirus, Ad Aware, Adobe Reader 7, Firefox with Google Toolbar and RealPlayer.

It’s free, its fully customisable, and the software is all up to date. It even includes Google Updater which lets you know when a new version of software is available.

The web browser war continues, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s dominance slipping to 85.05% market share in 2005 from 90.31% in 2004.

Microsoft’s loss was Mozilla Firefox’s gain: Firefox now has 9.57% market share. May not sound like much, but Firefox is showing steady growth, moving from an “early adopter product” to one used by the unwashed masses like you and me.

Microsoft are due to release a new version of IE soon, but have also announced they will no longer be supporting a version for the Mac. Learn more about the browser wars at ClickZ

Need some Internet trivia for the guys at the pub? Difficult to imagine, but this is Amazon’s 11th Christmas, and it has been a cracker.

On 12 December Amazon sold more than 3.6 million items, which amounts to a staggering 41 items per second.

Over 108 million items were ordered over the festive period, with the most expensive item being a $94,000 pair of earrings.

Amazon shipped to more than 200 countries
with 99% of items delivered on time

What a success story!