Phone numbers on ads. :mad:

[CPCretirement]

I dropped out of a few affiliate programs a while back because they had the phone number very large on the ad. It's kind of tough to get paid when someone avoids the affiliate click and calls direct.

I just went to one of my sites and I see an Adsense ad with some text and then the phone number! I'm going to filter the url from my adsense account. We see all this discussion of webmasters potentially ripping off advertisers by clicking on the ads. This is the reverse situation. An adwords advertiser trying to get free leads.

I'm going to have to check my adwords account to see if that breaks the TOS.

[CPCretirement]

Interesting. I just looked at the editorial guidelines and did not notice any guidelines prohibiting placing phone numbers in adwords ads.

Kind of defeats the whole biz model if they allow that. If someone is going to click on it anyway, you don't need the phone number in the ad. If they are going to call instead of click then they are circumventing payment for the ads.

[europeforvisitors]

The topic of phone numbers in AdSense ads was discussed here in late July, and the thread contains some useful insights:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Jenstar]

This was also discussed here [webmasterworld.com] where it seems the word from Google is that it is okay to have a phone number in an Adword ad, but the advertiser still must have the minimum CTR to keep the ad active.

[CPCretirement]

Thanks for the links.

The first link had some surprising comments. Sounds like in real world experience it might actually increase clicks. Not what I would have thought.