Google Ads

Ramp up your calls with call bid adjustments

Jul 26, 2017

3 min read

Amit Agarwal

Senior Product Manager, Calls & Messaging

Click-to-call ads were introduced seven years ago to help you connect with more customers over the phone. Since then, we’ve heard one thing loud and clear: you want to drive even more calls. And it’s no surprise—on average, calls convert three times better than web clicks.¹

To help you generate more calls, we’re rolling out new call bid adjustments, which allow you to control how often the call option appears with your search ads. Use call bid adjustments to increase bids on campaigns that drive valuable phone calls. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser, you may see higher order values from calls because it can be easier to cross-sell rental cars, group tours and other vacation add-ons during a live conversation. Raise your call bid adjustments to show call extensions more frequently and drive more of these high-value call conversions.

“Calls are an important source of new customer leads for us. Call bid adjustments help us improve our click-to-call visibility and ensure we’re appearing in the top 1-2 positions on mobile. Our on-the-go customers convert quickly within a short window of time, so it’s critical to be front and center, and show them that we offer storage units at the right price and location. Since implementing call bid adjustments and bidding higher for calls, we’ve seen a 37% increase in call volume with a 22% decrease in average cost-per-call.”
- Stephanie Christensen, Paid Acquisition Analyst

“Our customers want to speak to a real person to make sure they’re choosing the right medical alert system for themselves or a loved one. When we can walk them through our offerings live and give them that peace of mind, they have a 30% likelihood of converting, which is nearly 2x higher than with web leads. Someone connecting with us from a call extension is more valuable than a website click, so call bid adjustments allow us to optimize for that greater value. We’ve worked with our agency, Metric Theory, to increase bids specifically for calls and improve how often the call extension shows. As a result, we’ve generated 20% higher call volume while decreasing the cost by 60%.”
- Matt Guerrieri, Director of Marketing

“Call bid adjustments have helped us meet a key marketing objective by delivering a strong uplift in performance year over year, with a 79% increase in click to call rate. It has also enabled us to target our audience to generate higher value insurance policies. The flexibility of the service allows us to make the call option more prominent, thereby driving a greater number of relevant calls. Calls deliver a significant proportion of our monthly leads and we are currently working to push call bid adjustments even harder.”

- Anthony Gamble, Head of Digital Marketing (Acquisition)

Call bid adjustments are available exclusively in the new AdWords experience, which will roll out to all advertisers by the end of the year.² To learn more about AdWords calls solutions, visit our Help Center. You can also check out best practices for maximizing calls performance and improving the caller experience.

^{1. Google internal data, 2016

2. The new AdWords experience is rolling out to all advertisers throughout 2017. Once you have access, you can easily switch back and forth between the new and previous experiences.}

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Ramp up your calls with call bid adjustments

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