Adwords Introduces Bid Per Call

At Swascorp we’re constantly looking for ways to get the most out of Adwords campaigns in terms of profitable sales and leads. To do this we use the full range of targeting, bidding, tracking and reporting features available within Adwords in conjunction with Google Analytics. Recently Adwords announced that they would be introducing a new feature called bid per call which we believe will give advertisers even greater control and insight when it comes to optimising there campaigns for phone call leads.

Bid per call will be available in the UK and US over the next couple of weeks, and will allow advertisers to place bids for phone calls when their Google search ads appear on desktop machines and tablets.

The new feature is particularly useful for businesses that are able to place a monetary value on phone call leads. Your bid for phone calls and phone call quality score will factor into the way your ads are ranked. Higher ranked ads are more likely to be seen, and therefore more likely to generate higher volumes of calls.

To initiate bid per call you first need to set up a Google call forwarding number in the Call Extensions section of your Adwords account. The forwarding number allows the Adwords system to track when a call is made to your business. You will also have access to detailed call information such as:

Summary of completed calls, Phone-through rate (PTR – like CTR but for calls) and cost information. These details will be available on the Ad Group an Campaigns tab.
Details of individual calls such as call time and duration, area codes and the ad group that drove the call.. These details can be found on the Dimensions tab.

To be eligible to use bid per call, advertisers must be in the US or UK and their ad groups must reach certain click and call thresholds. Maximum cost per phone call (Max. CPP) bids are entered in at ad group level. If you’re already using call metrics, you will need to enter a Max . CPP to initiate bid per call.