phone numbers in adwords ads

can't be allowed, can it?

[esllou]

just been on my site checking out some adsense ads and I saw one with a phone number in it. Ad said something like:

widget repair service, call 12343444 now for a quote.

There is no way that would be allowed by google, is there? talk about free advertising....

can't recieve many clicks I wouldn't have thought.

[jbinbpt]

Would that be a local number for you, or was it a toll free number? Did you search specify a local? Can adwords be this targeted?
jb

[esllou]

the url was a co.uk one and I seem to remember the UK being mentioned in the ad..."best in UK" or something like that. Then there was the full number with area code....020-23453245 so it was targetting UK I imagine. I am in Italy and saw it.

If anyone knows where I can report it, I would appreciate it. Could just stop the ad appearing on my site using adsense controls, but I just think it is so sly and dishonest that I would actually like to report the fiend!

[jbinbpt]

I reviewed the TOS and did not find a specific reference to telephone numbers appearing in ads.

I have not seen an ad with a phone number, so I searched on my city and state. Ads with phone numbers to book hotel reservations were the only ads displayed.

This is the email address from the Adwords TOS:

 [e-mail] 

They say you can also notify them of fraudulent or bad-faith advertisers.

[esllou]

OK, I have written to them.

As I said to them in the mail, I understand there is a minimum CTR to maintain on AdWords but it doesn't count for content/AdSense sites so this bloke is happily getting free advertising. It is a very cpm thing to do and he is in effect getting free CPC advertising.

[wackybrit]

I'd imagine that getting enough information in the ad to convince people to call the phone number wouldn't be easy. If the phone number is one of the two content lines, you just have a title and a single content line to convince someone to call.

I'd also be interested in the outcome of this though (AdWordsAdvisor?) as I might be tempted to try some similar ads, although I imagine the results would be less than amazing.

[eWhisper]

One of my clients has a phone number, 1-800-keyword. I've used this in several ads, and due to the keyword being in the phone number, it's received a very good CTR. Google has approved this ad, and I've talked to Google about it, and they have no problems with this phone number appearing in ads.

Not sure if I'd bother to put a phone number in an ad if it wasn't a toll free number that's easy to remember though, think you'd be better off using the space for more specific content.

[esllou]

google responded saying more or less what eWhisper said...that they didn't have a problem with it and their experience showed that is was an inefficent use of space and that experiments using phone numbers invariably lasted a short time.

was an interesting thing to note though....ad still running on my site.

[ogletree]

My 800 number is the URL that way I don't use any space for it.