Google’s Click-to-Call Growing Amid Booming Mobile Activity

The number of advertisers using click-to-call features on Google ads has grown an average of 28 percent month-over-month over the last few months, the company confirmed. The 28 percent stat represents all of Google’s advertisers, in both search and display, around the globe.

As first reported by GigaOm and confirmed by Search Engine Land, Google says hundreds of thousands of its advertisers are currently using phone extensions, which has led to the initiation of millions of calls a month. The company shared that campaigns with the click-to-call feature are experiencing 6 to 8 percent higher click-through rates than campaigns without. Previously, a Google exec had said that click-throughs were “5 to 30 percent better” than other AdWords CTRs in mobile. It also released a case study earlier this month in which Roy’s Restaurants saw an 800 percent return-on-investment from mobile ads with click-to-call.

Google rolled out the click-to-call features across its content network in July, after extending it to all advertisers in search in May.

Back in August on its latest earnings call, Google executives had said that cost-per-click (CPC) prices were a bit lower on mobile devices, because people are less likely to complete transactions on mobile devices, at least until payment platforms are more well-developed on mobile. Ads with the click-to-call capability appear to buck that general assessment.

“People are searching on their mobile devices and they then want to make a phone call, or they are searching on their devices and looking for something very local,” said Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development, on that earnings call. “That is where the trend is and where we expect to see more monetization.”

Google has said that Android users search twice as much as other mobile users, so the growth of the Android operating system has also likely been a boon to paid search in mobile, and click-to-call by extension. The company said it was seeing a $1 billion annualized run rate for mobile revenues, as of its earnings call in August. Additionally, mobile search queries have grown by 5 times over the past two years.