pay per call

AT&T Interactive Continues to Drop the Ball on Pay Per Call

Posted by: Brian Fluhr on Nov 11, 2009

Tagged in: small business , pay per call

Here's one service we will not be recommending to our clients: AT&T Interactive's Pay Per Call service. After a lengthy process to get a simple ad up and running, (see my previous post), our ad is running. We run the advertisement M-F from 7:30AM to 4:30PM in the Orange County, CA market. The ad is only supposed to display during these hours. Yet, in reviewing the account detail on our account, I discovered a charge for a pay per call that occurred on Sat, Nov. 7. Our ads are not supposed to run on weekends as we are not in the studio to answer those calls.

So, why did we receive a charge for a call that occurred on a weekend? I don't know, so I submitted the question through the customer support email form on the AT&T Interactive web site. It's been 3 days, and I have not received a response.

AT&T Interactive clearly doesn't get it. If AT&T wants to have a chance to play with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the pay per click/call ad space, it better get it's act together. Self service merchant advertising is clearly a winning solution for all parties involved, but when AT&T doesn't respond and doesn't provide advertisers with the tools of transparency to answer their own questions, AT&T will clearly lose.

Of course, it is not that I care about AT&T winning or losing - I care about offering effective advertising and marketing solutions for our client's. AT&T Interactive's Pay Per Call is clearly not one of the those solutions.

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AT&T's Pay Per Call Advertising Stall

Posted by: Brian Fluhr on Oct 21, 2009

Tagged in: sem , pay per call , advertising

As cosumers and marketers, we live in a transparent, on demand world. If we want to get a client's Google Adwords campaign up and running immediately, Google gives us the near instant power to do so. If we want to get a client set up on Twitter or Facebook - done...1.2.3.

So, you can imagine how frustrated we are having decided to test out AT&T Interactive's Pay Per Call advertising program. The concept is simple - it's just like pay per click, but instead, you pay when someone actually picks up the phone and calls you. We are excited about testing this tactic - feeling that this may be a cost effective solution for our clients - however, we are disappointed to find that it can take up to 3 days for our ad to be approved.

Really, 3 days? I don't get it. I want to proactively give AT&T money in return for advertising results (qualified phone calls) and it takes three days for approval?

AT&T, we are not off to a good start here.

I will keep you posted on the progress and the results.

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Update: Oct. 22 - 3:42 PM Pacific Time.

Just checked our AT&T Interactive Pay Per Call account. This is what I see....

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"Pending Acceptance" Status

Reason: New Ad ? Acceptance Review Required

In order to ensure the quality of our callers' experience, we review every new ad before accepting it to appear within our network, a process which can take up to three business days. The "pending acceptance" status means that your ad hasn't yet been accepted. Once accepted, the status of your ad will be updated.

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This is day 3. Ridiculous. It is just one more reason I am annoyed with AT&T - poor Iphone cellular service is #1. How can one text ad with a phone number take 3 days for approval? Plus, they already took our money to run the ads. Hmmm...maybe the results of or our test will change our minds, but as of right now, I am having a hard time thinking we will recommend this service to our clients - or at least those clients who are looking to get their campaign start quickly!