There are many possibilities as to what’s causing this. If you’re confident the ads you wrote are targeting people who would really want your offerings, the question then becomes whether the site you have is conveying “trust, professionalism, value”.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment – I agree that some business owners may find additional leads. I actually think this is going to impact a very small percentage of ads, at least in it’s current form.

People first need to KNOW about the form opportunity, then have to know how to set it up, and then will only have the form displayed if they’re in the top position in the paid listings on any given search; then and only then, will the form appear.

So from that perspective, I don’t see this initially being a massive problem.

Again though, the biggest issue I have still remains with the fact that Google controls the prospect’s information – both from a privacy perspective and a marketing perspective so this is mostly a win for Google.

Love to see a debate about it but I dont understand your vehemency against adwords based forms.

I see your point on loosing on “persuasive juicy techniques”, I also agree on not wanting to share data with big daddy G but small businesses might really get a push.

Here is how I see it: the googler lands on a google hosted form… what is not to trust about google? (from the end-user point of view)
Sure, google will say in many different ways that the form is only hosted and so on, but in the mind of the inexperienced googler might have different meaning and make a huge difference.

I think that hosted forms will boost the sales of mass market few dollars worth products / services in an instant but have no or even negative impact on niche higher sales.

To be honest, recently I am seriously reconsidering the mass market myself.

The quantity vs. quality story of all businesses .

Targeting? Qualifying? NO! Just numbers, big juicy numbers. I am pretty tempted.
Steven Gun´s last blog ..TNT Dark Green Golden Temptation

I just don’t see a very large upside to site owners given that perspective. Especially when you consider that this form will only show up in top PPC spots. That’s a lot of paying for tire kickers who might become more than that if they could get to the site and be presented with more information.

very interesting article. some clients’ visitors might fill out the lead form immediately and other clients require more reading and research before they will give their info. i’ve seen this when placing the lead form on the landing page vs a contact page. maybe the leads will become less qualified in these cases?

what kind of effect will this have on clients that value lead forms + phone calls? especially if you are tracking phone calls to the keyword….seems to be pretty beneficial as long as google is the go-between, but i’m not convinced it will provide more value to advertisers with this setup.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your perspective. It may improve lead generation but only among those who have enough confidence from a two line ad, in a sea of ads, to be willing to provide personal contact information.

Here’s another snag in this. Now, you’re going to have to work with the client to determine the personal information to be gathered for this new form, but then explain that you can’t guarantee WHICH form fields will show up. Then you have to explain about the 24 hour rule, about the fact that they have to call GOOGLE to get TRANSFERRED to the prospect…

Which brings up a new issue that wasn’t yet clarified according to the PPC Hero article,

“However, you can’t contact the user yet, you have to call a special Google phone number and provide it with a lead ID, which will then re-route you to your potential customer.”

So does that mean you call Google, an automated system gives you a direct number to call or just transfers you to the customer number? I pray for business owners it’s the former rather than the latter.

But that’s just it. The additional layering of data and process really sucks.

OH – and then you have to explain to your client that this form thing will only show up if you’re in a certain spot in the sponsored section. Which means you still need to have all the other previously thought out work in place for actual click-throughs.

And that means it’s that much more work for PPC managers.

Secondly, I don’t think I would EVER fill out one of those forms w/o visiting the website first, but that’s just me. some ppl don’t WANT a richer user experience, they just want quick answers, and they might bypass a website altogether if they can’t get what they’re looking for quickly.

I agree the contacting thing within 24 hours is stupid.

I am only thinking about small businesses, and could see where this would have an adverse affect on other types of businesses, and may not be a good thing for certain business models.

And I think that’s what google is thinking of, small businesses, because they’re not evil. ha, right. i’m sure it’s all to help their bottom line, but i also can see the benefits for certain small businesses.

I think it’s good for different types of users to have more options in how they can use the web.