• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 19, 2016

The growth of mobile advertising gives marketers more options to reach consumers, but not having the tools to confirm the progress can hurt campaigns and budgets. Marchex on Thursday announced the integration of its mobile advertising analytics platform into Adobe Media Optimizer to give enterprise search marketers relying on inbound phone calls for sales data the insight into their return on ad spend.

The company says the integration into Marchex Search Analytics delivers 100% keyword attribution for calls placed directly from paid-search ads for an unlimited number of keywords and any campaign structure. While technology remains the catalyst, a shift in consumer behavior and the trend toward mobile required the change to understand the impact of search keywords on inbound phone calls.

John Busby, SVP of consumer insights and marketing at Marchex, explains that the integration makes it possible to gain insights on every phone call for each keyword directly through Adobe Media Optimizer, including call outcomes and Interactive Voice Response inputs. The insights allow marketers to automate paid-search bidding by allocating budgets toward keywords that drive over-the-phone purchases. This connects the dots between paid search and offline sales, measuring things like audiences and consumer intent from digital ads across every channel and device.

Calls will remain a major part of a search marketer's campaign strategy, and tracking them will become more important. The Local Search Association released the study -- Local Media Tracking Study -- in February that found consumers are more likely to pick up the phone to contact the brand or the retailer after looking through the printed Yellow Pages or browsing the online version, at 49% vs. 43%, respectively, followed by searching on engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo for information at 23%; ratings or reviews, 30%; social network, 26%; and online video, 23%.

With search advertising and marketing moving into the next phase of voice interactions, what happens when the device that connects the consumer with the brand or the retailer becomes a home networking hub like Google Home or Amazon Echo and their respective virtual assistants?

Busby said the company is working to make that connection through virtual assistants and chatbots, but it's too early to provide specifics on any integration or strategy. He did discuss the possibilities. "If companies use a call tracking number, they could use the technology to analyze the impact of those calls, but it's too early to comment," he told Search Marketing Daily. "Data from call analytics can inform the scripting of this type of assistance or the ways the consumer interacts with Home or Echo."