Managed PPC Investigates: Google Testing In-Ad Contact Form Extensions

Google are alpha-testing being a fully-fledged lead generation service through the use of contact forms in PPC ads. Whilst this is happening in the US, should it go live (and it may not), our Google contacts have indicated that we can expect to see this in the UK towards the end of 2010.

How Will It Work?

At the moment, users reveal the contact form by clicking on the + sign (see above) and enter their details before clicking on a ‘give me a call’ button.

As the advertiser, you then get a ‘Lead ID’, call a Google freephone number and enter that Lead ID to be connected to the customer.

Google give you up to 3 custom questions to use in the form and will display some or all of these based on their ‘quality algorithm’.

At the moment this test is restricted to phone leads and you are obliged to call the lead within 24 hours.

What Are The Implications?

The implications on this are potentially massive. Google are doing what business experts would describe as ‘moving down the value chain’ or ‘vertically integrating’ from providing website visitors to actually providing leads. Maybe one day they’ll call the leads for us too and we can all lie on a beach somewhere, waiting for business to drop into our cocktails?

But it’s much bigger than that… and it comes with a mixture of good, bad and ugly.

The good: it’s simple – more leads surely? If you’re selling widgets and convert a high percentage of all of your leads into sales, this can only be a good thing. Having this form will also be a good way to make your ad stand out. We also think this could work quite well on the Content Network, where clicks are usually far cheaper.

The bad: you don’t get the data – Google does. Google is going to charge you a per click/form fill to generate data that it’s not going to give you. Will Google start selling this data down the line?

Google also controls which questions actually appear on the form with its own ‘quality algorithm’. It’s one thing controlling ad positioning with such algorithm but to actually modify the content  is, to me, a bit much.

The ugly: Having structured their SEO algorithm and even parts of their PPC service (site links) towards incentivising website owners to make quality content and make a good user experience, Google are now offering a way for users to bypass this altogether.

What’s wrong with that? Well, if a percentage of users just fill out the form without reading all of your carefully worded sales pitch, your lead quality is going to plummet, while the number of clicks/leads you buy rockets.

The result? At first, lead generating advertisers will marvel at the how their CPAs are plummeting. Then they’ll walk next door and see a busy sales team and smile smugly. A few weeks later, they’ll look at their sales figures with shock as they realised that the sales team has actually been busy trying to sift out the low-quality leads that they’ve been given, rather than making money.

The Verdict

For some businesses, these leads will be a profitable source of revenue – these businesses will be those with relatively simple sales propositions that aren’t particularly niche – most likely the big boys.

For other, more complex businesses, Google generated leads won’t even be an option as there’s no way you can generate even a vaguely qualified lead with a few lines of ad text.

For most business, however, there will be a bit of both and it will require a careful internal lead management, qualification and auditing system to make sure that these leads become profitable – and its the hidden cost of these processes that is the real pitfall.