Marchex recently introduced its new solution Marchex Call Analytics for Search to give marketers the ability to track and measure which keywords drive sales for mobile users that call businesses directly from click-to-call ads on their smartphones. Marketers can then use this information to improve their campaigns in real-time. 

"It was clear from the data that we had too many keywords grouped together and needed to get more thematic,? said Brad Roberts, vice president of digital marketing and ecommerce at Allconnect, Atlanta. ?For example, instead of talking about cities and states bundled together, like ?Chicago, Illinois,? I can break out in groups assigned to cities and states - not bundled together - as the data told us that this approach would drive more calls.?

Allconnect is a company that offers customers a single source to compare and connect integrated media, broadband, home protection, energy and green products. The company started using Marchex?s product in October 2014 as a Call Analytics for Search beta customer.

For Allconnect, a company that offers customers a convenient single source to compare and connect integrated media, broadband, home protection, energy and green products, Call Analytics for Search boosted gross profit for click-to-call campaigns by 50 percent and decreased its cost-per-acquisition by 43 percent, according to Mr. Roberts.

 

"The real-time data really boosted our results and showed us where we had untapped opportunities," Mr. Roberts said. "No other product on the market has been able to optimize our results in this way. 

?As a company that is constantly looking for innovative technology to enhance our business, we are really excited to see that this product is moving to the next stage," he said.

Time Warner Cable and Allconnect are among Marchex's initial customers for the product. Marchex believes that mobile phone calls from consumers to businesses are growing due to the rapid adoption of smartphones, which are a lead source for advertisers.

The launch of Call Analytics for Search aims to close an attribution gap for marketers that apparently spent $4 billion in 2014 to drive phone calls through click-to-call ads yet had zero visibility into which keywords produced these valuable calls from consumers, according to a new white paper called "The $4 Billion Blind Spot" by the Marchex Institute, the research and insights team at Marchex.

Marchex?s new technology works to give certain feedback to its customers, such as keyword attribution from all phone calls driven from mobile search, real-time conversion data using Marchex Call DNA technology to identify those calls that are most likely to convert into sales and automated setup and synchronization with leading bid-management platforms, such as DoubleClick, Kenshoo and Marin, which allow marketers to measure and hopefully improve their campaigns.

The Marchex Institute also found that click-to-call ads represent 60 percent of all calls to businesses from mobile search. Existing products have only provided keyword attribution for calls coming from mobile landing pages, which make up just 40 percent of total call volume, the findings showed.

Brands are seeking these third-party companies to get clear ideas of their advertising efforts.

In fact, Sony Music and Universal are experimenting with a new music-focused, advertising retargeting platform to reach more consumers in contextual ways through shortened links on social media sites.

Currently, participating record labels and artists are using the tool to retarget potential customers, launch exclusive promotions and disseminate original content to their target audiences. The platform, which is called found.ee, officially launched last week aiming to streamline marketing for the music industry (see story).

Another example, film studio StudioCanal?s video ad campaign in Britain for its film, Imitation Game, garnered a positive response, including a 99.5 percent user completion rate, and delivered nearly 60 hours of brand engagement.

The campaign was launched to raise awareness of the film?s release and drive online views of the trailer. The video ad was delivered to consumers that are known to enjoy seeing movies in theaters on reflective Web sites, including Empire, Grazia, Q and Mojo magazines (see story).

Undoubtedly, brands can benefit from seeing these results.

?As far as the bigger picture, where we previously had zero visibility on which keywords actually drove consumer phone calls from mobile click-to-call ads, we now have the ability to do things like make our keywords more thematic, if our data tells us that these keywords drive more of the calls we want,? Mr. Roberts said. ?So as obvious as it may sound, it's much easier to optimize our keywords, now that we can finally know which keywords and types of keywords drive the consumer calls we want, and we can focus our marketing spend on the keywords that have a higher propensity to convert to sales."