Ads With Skype Phone #?

[Go60Guy]

I've been noticing for some time that there are ads appearing that also carry a clickable Skype phone number. I've searched for threads about this here at WebmasterWorld, but can't seem to turn up any info.

Can we assume that, if a visitor clicks on a Skype entry, that it counts as a compensable click our purposes?

[mack]

Are they related to Google's click to call service?

Mack.

[Go60Guy]

Are they related to Google's click to call service?

I don't know, but, then, maybe I haven't kept up with things.

[darkyl]

I think you might have a default Skype plugin installed which "intercepts" phone numbers on web pages and lets you call them via skype.

[mack]

Excellent point. If you visit a page with a correctly formated phone number does it do the same thing? If you have a plug in for Skype it will extract the value from the page and make it callable.

Mack.

[Demaestro]

default Skype plugin installed

For sure that is what it is. When you install Skype it installs an add-on in FF for sure, and maybe IE, without telling you that it is doing so.

I found out about it because an earlier version was crashing people's FF browsers and making FF really really slow.

I like Skype but I find it sleazy that they install an add-on without telling you.

[Go60Guy]

OK. So, again my question is, assuming a visitor has the same Skype setup that I do, and clicks on the phone # entry displayed in the AdSense ad, are we compensated for the click?

[mack]

I don't think so. Its the skype plug-in thats converting the number to a clickable item. It doesn't even go through the Google system. The plug in is just reading the number from any page and making it accessible.

Mack.

[Go60Guy]

Well then, if that's true, the advertiser gets the benefit of an actual ad referral without having to pay anything allocated to the publisher. So, does anyone get paid for the click? Skype? Google?

[mack]

Seams only Skype would profit from this!

Mack.

[Demaestro]

I know that in an iPhone that Safari also makes 10 digit numbers a link that you can call from your phone.

I wonder if smartphones are doing this as well in ads.

It does seem to be a hole in the system

[mack]

Android does the same when it sees a valid phone number. I think this is something Google need to revisit, Currently they allow phone numbers within ads. New technology is undermining this quite a lot.

Mack.

[Go60Guy]

It does seem to be a hole in the system

Yeah, looks like there's a leak.