• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 1, 2019

Google has updated the layout for its call-only ads to make the phone number more prominent in an effort to help marketers drive higher-quality leads. The new ad format falls in line with research released Tuesday from Invoca, a call tracking and conversational analytics company.

Invoca surveyed 500 business-to-consumer marketers who oversee a budget of more than $1 million across a range of companies and industries who have at least three years of marketing experience.

Invoca partnered with MarketCube to do the survey, which was conducted in the field in July/August 2019.  

Given that most marketers use Google Analytics, it's surprising that just more than one-quarter do not have a view into their website data about customer interactions, which some marketers get from call tracking. Although 56% have access to phone call data, only 8% say it is the top source used to personalize advertising and marketing campaigns.

It appears that marketers that use call tracking are more confident when it comes to their use of first-party offline data. The 93% who use call tracking say that phone transactions have a “big to medium impact on the company’s bottom line.”

These marketers also are more confident in the way they use the data, with 74% saying they are confident in their skills to use data to personalize marketing campaigns, compared with 61% of those who don’t use call tracking.

The type of data they use varies. Some 73% said they have access to their company’s website data, 66% have access to mobile app data, 66% have access to in-store transitions, 62% have access to purchase history data, and just 56% have access to phone call data.

When asked which type of first-party data they use most to inform digital marketing, 56% cite their company’s website, while 42% cite mobile apps, 38%, purchase history, 35%, in-store interactions, 30%, email, 28% web forms, 17%, phone calls, 22%, organic search, and 21%, online chats.  

Study participants said they do plan to invest more in offline data. Fifty-eight percent said they plan to invest in in-store interaction data, while 55% plan to invest more in direct mail, 52%, radio and television, 51%, outdoor advertising, 49%, print media, 48%, events, and 47%, phone calls.

Either offline or online, marketers still encounter challenges when optimizing ad performance. Some 46% said data quality and accuracy is a challenge, while 42% cited privacy concerns, 31% said they have too much data to analyze, and 28% said their data remains in silos and is difficult to integrate.