August 31, 2005
More on Teleo deal
Microsoft's acquisition of Teleo, which specializes in Internet-based voice calling, is expected to add new features to MSN Messenger and other MSN services. (See today's story for more details.) Many of the reports today speculate about how Microsoft will implement the technology. Gary Stein at Jupiter Research, for example, explains the potential opportunity for MSN based on the Teleo technology for clicking on a link to make a call.
"I imagine that pay-per-call would be an interesting offering within their AdCenter advertising/search offering. We know that local merchants would rather pay for a call than a click; having pay-per-call as a product is pretty much a must for anyone looking to get into the local directory business."
Posted by Todd Bishop at August 31, 2005 10:45 AM
I think what Google and MSN are doing really validates what companies like eStara, www.estara.com, have been doing over the past few years. People that advertise both in print and online, want to be able to track the success of their campaigns. Click to Call and Pay per call advertising makes this possible. So far, eStara has been the leader with large enterprise customers. It will be interesting to see what happens now that there's so much speculation about Google and Microsoft joining the race.
