VoIP Inc. has launched its pay-per-call advanced VoIP ad network product called RazrClick. The company claimed eBay and Google had signed up to use the technology which enables users to call by simply clicking on a web link. VoIP Inc. markets its products through its subsidiary VoiceOne communications, a provider of an array of VoIP services.

VoIP Inc. recently retained lawyers to enforce its patents over its pay-per-call technology. Google experimented with its own pay-per-call advertising two years ago, but did not pursue it. VoIP Inc. claims advertisers pay an average of $8 to $10 per call and that Kelsey Research has estimated the U.S. pay-per-call advertising market will rise to $4 billion by end of 2009. That is the same size as the entire U.S. paid-search market that Google dominates--and that Microsoft so desperately wants to be a major player in.  

The technology is still largely unproven from an advertiser ROI perspective and at least one leading VoIP blogger, Garrett Smith, remains a skeptic. I suspect pay-per-call will have its real utility in the mobile space when users are using their smartphone's data services. And if--as Gartner predicts--smartphones do start to take pre-eminence over laptops, that could provide a very useful platform for the distribution of pay-per-call advertising networks.

It was little noticed Google's admitted some of its Q4 revenue softness had been caused by lower click-through rates for its ubiquitous text ads. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has argued strongly for 10 years that eye-tracking technology shows web users almost never look at anything that looks like an ad. The only exception: those fake dialog boxes with "OK" and "Cancel" buttons.

For more:
- Pay-per-click ad RazrClick network launched Release
- Google puts a hold on pay-per-call ads Article
- Pay-per-call advertising: Is anyone calling? Blog

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