Anyone noticed AdSense ads with phone #s lately?

Trying to get free advertising, and not have to pay for a lead?

[toomer]

Maybe this has been going on for a while and I was blind to it -- I'd turned AdSense off (hosts file to 127.0.0.1) while I was building out my sites. Now that my sites have been running for a little while, and I'm getting good targeting - I'm noticing something that I find a bit annoying ....

Namely, AdWords publishers are putting their phone numbers in the body of their ads and - presumably - trying to encourage potential customers to call them on the phone for an order or more information, than to click on the ad.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a crappy thing to do? For instance, right now on one of my tech-related sites I have two wide skyscrapers with 4 ads in each. Out of those 8 ads, 3 are currently publishing their phone numbers and asking users to call.

I would expect Google would want to prohibit this practice, as they lose out as well as us publishers. Has this been going on for a while, or is it a relatively new phenomenon?

-Toomer

[thegreatpretender]

This has been discussed here before but can't find the thread. The concesus is that, ctr increases due to ad becomes more credible because of the tel. no. People will not just call, they'd click the ad first and check what's the deal before making a call if they want to.