Click to Call

A recent survey from Airwide Solutions states that:

"By 2008, 89%of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audience, with nearly one-third planning to spend in excess of 10% of marketing budgets on the medium. In five years over half of brands(52%) expect to spend between 5% and 25% of total marketing budget on mobile marketing."

Its still hard to tell exactly what mobile marketing is but there is certainly a ton of convergence that will take place over the next five years. First eBay acquired Skype (PDF.) Now Microsoft is getting in the VOIP game.

And then this from The WSJ (subscription required.)

"Consumers trawling Google Inc.'s search engine may have noticed a new icon appearing beside some advertisements on the Google Web site: a little telephone handset.

The handset image is part of a "click to call" test that Google has been running since late last year. Web surfers wanting to talk with a participating advertiser can type their phone numbers in a designated space and have Google connect them on a free call. Google gets the consumer and the merchant talking by causing both their phones to ring at the same time.

"It's the most promising new model in paid search," says Gerry Campbell, vice president of search and directional media at America Online. "Is it as big as paid search? Hopefully, although I don't think that's realistic in the next five years."

Connecting consumers and merchants by telephone could bring new advertisers to paid search, particularly small businesses and services firms that don't transact business online. It could also help companies that rely on call centers to sign up customers."