KelseyGroup on SkypeWeb & Presence Management in Advertising

Interesting commentary from Kelsey's Greg Sterling on Skype's recent SkypeWeb announcement. Greg believes that eBay/Skype is also planning for presence-enabled advertising and potentially PPCall for local advertisers. That seems right to me.

We appreciate, as well, Greg's acknowledgement of ContactAtOnce! leading the way in the application of presence-based advertising :-)

SkypeWeb

Yesterday, Skype announced their SkypeWeb product to project presence onto web sites and enable Skype calls to be initiated by clicking the presence icon from the web site. This concept is not particularly new, Yahoo! and AOL have made this feature available on their networks for years. Nor is the concept particularly broadly applicable given numerous limitations, both site visitor and advertiser must use Skype, as one notable example. Nevertheless, I believe it rather important for many reasons.

As reported here earlier, eBay & Skype -- Reducing Friction of Commerce, eBays' acquisition of Skype seems strategically planned for eBay to provide presence-enabled advertisingon eBay and the many eBay network properties. SkypeWeb strikes me as another logical step in that direction.

Beyond PPCall in Paid Search

Recently ContactAtOnce! received a mention in a Greg Sterling post to the Kelsey Group blog. Greg’s view is that PPC ads will evolve to provide a different user experience, incorporating audio, video, etc. We couldn’t agree more and, as a matter of fact, just published a new "one-pager" that describes how we can help paid search providers drive better response rates while improving the experience of their users.

Following is a sample of how such an ad may appear below and working examples can be found on the corporate site home page.


Stay tuned for more news on this front, but we expect to see paid search providers adding presence-aware options for their advertisers soon. From a publisher perspective, it is a great way to create premium inventory and drive new revenue. Uniquely, it also enhances the consumer’s experience. Let’s see…publishers are happy (more revenue), advertisers are happy (more leads), and consumers are happy (better experience)…seems like a winner to me!

PPCall in Paid Search

Excellent observations from Greg Sterling at the Kelsey Group yesterday regarding PayPerCall in Paid Search.

Greg concisely and empirically makes the point for elevating Paid Search from a pay-per-click model to a pay-per-lead model. For the simple reason that pay-per-lead will command a 10x-30x price multiple of pay-per-click. The obvious is true: many advertisers want leads, not clicks.