Merchants displaying untracking telephone numbers

[Top banana]

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hi,

Can the IAB consider stopping merchants from displaying untracked telelphone numbers on their sites, which customers can order through?

thanks.

[andrewjamescrowther]

some merchants do need to put a phone number somewhere on the site so a one size fits all approach can't surely be possible.

telephone masking or alternatively a considered approach to where the number is displayed on the site for affiliate traffic help.

of course, affiliates have the final say in whether they want to promote a merchant or not too!

[mattb811]

In my experience this is something that all networks will discuss with merchants but I do not feel that there can be any regulatory intervention to force merchants to remove phone numbers.

For some merchants a significant proportion of their sales will come through on the phone and they would therefore be willing to remove these. In some cases sales can be tracked via the phone but this generally requires the merchant to implement technology/tracking at their end. I have yet to see a third party solution that can track sales accurately.

I'm sure that some merchants will factor the lost sales into their CPA in order to be competitve but as Andrew says above, if it doesn't work out for affiliates on an EPC basis because of this leakage, then they should stop working with that particular merchant.

[Ben C]

Just to back this up, whenever a client comes on board to the network who has prominent numbers then a variety of options are discussed.

Affiliate traffic-specific non-phone-number banners are used where possible, but for some merchants the offline conversion rate can be that much higher than the website that it makes no sense, particularly for highly considered purchases - such as those with 12+ month contracts - that it's much better for the affiliate for the offline sales to be factored into the CPA paid for the ones that do convert online.

Cheers

Ben