Henry Blodget writes about Ingenio, the pay-per-call company that used to power Match.com's Profile Helper service (Ingenio used to be Keen.com). Evidently, Match got the short end of the deal with Ingenio, and canceled the service after a year or so due to lack of interest. Some blame the short lifespan of the profile service on technical glitches, something about the modules on your Match home page loading in the browser by default in the closed position, so you couldn't see the ads and offers without clicking a link.

Pay-per-call and click-to-call are hot topics in the online advertising space at the moment. Bloget does a good job describing the differences between Ingenio's service and Google's new click-to-call offering. Pundits are pitting Google vs. Ingenio, and Bloget thinks Ingenio is a acquisition target for Microsoft or Yahoo.

I remember when AT&T offered click-to-call services for websites in 1997, what's old is new again. Disruptive technologies like VOIP will do that.

The average price-per-call across the Ingenio network is now $10-$11 per call. In some categories, prices-per-call are as much as $60.

Click-to-call makes sense for dating sites, from a customer acquisition and customer service. I have never once seen an "Operators are standing by" mention on a dating site. Offering a live or even a pre-recorded sales pitch as a link in your affiliate marketing materials and pay-to-click ads might be just what it takes to get customers to take out their wallets on your sites instead of the competition's.

I haven't seen any sites that make use of this technology yet, although I suspect some are testing it out quietly.

As a dating site executive, where will you spend your money in 2006? On offering new communication features for members in the hopes that this will differentiate you from your competitors or implement technology-based customer acquisition and retention systems?
Or, simply raise your marketing spend and hope for the best?

[tags: clicktocall, paytocall, ingenio]