Advertising needs to be tracked even if the advertiser is playing a flat monthly fee because they still want to know whether or not its working. As an industry, we need to separate the issues of measurement and payment. People usually link the two. But all advertisers care about whether or not their advertising actually works. This is especially true in a difficult economic environment and with some of the negative publicity swirling around Yellow Page publishers.
Over at the Kelsy Group Blog, Charles Laughlin has a post about Bill Dinan assuming the role of CEO at TelMetrics. Bill is betting that Yellow Page publishers are going to step up their call tracking:
Spurred on by defections to more flexible and transparent “pulse” media like direct mail and search, publishers are increasing their commitment to call measurement (and the new business models this enables).
“The publishers are stepping up this year,” Dinan says. And Dinan says he is preparing for the day the phone rings and a customer asks for “a million lines next month.” The indsutry is changing so much so that a request of that magnitude no longer seems so outlandish.
In particular, Dinan sees a very aggressive push toward performance-based pricing as evidence directory publishers are serious about changing the dynamic of SMB defections to other media, or to no media spending at all.
I couldn’t agree more with Bill. And he might be right that pay for performance will be the initial trigger. But really, the Yellow Page publishers shouldn’t restrict call tracking to just pay for performance advertisers.
RELATED: How do I know if my Yellow Page ad is working?
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