RingRevenue, a pay-per-call platform designed for affiliate networks, has closed a $3.5 million funding round led by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, and Great Pacific Capital. The company is looking to tap into the huge volume of sales that occur via the telephone, helping affiliate networks and ad agencies track phone calls in much the same way online ad clicks are tracked.
The platform allows affiliate networks to assign both unique local and toll free phone numbers to publishers running a given ad campaign. These unique numbers can then be used by the advertiser to track the performance of their publishers’ campaigns and compensate them accordingly. CEO and founder Jason Spievak acknowledges that there are other companies offering call tracking to advertisers, but says that these weren’t built with the affiliate community in mind. Using most other systems, advertisers are forced to manage the logistics of distributing the numbers to publishers and subsequently compensating them. RingRevenue lets advertisers leave the logistical issues to the affiliate networks, who are well versed in them.
The platform also includes a number of features designed to help advertisers maximze their returns. RingRevenue can filter inbound callers in real time, which allows advertisers to selectively choose which callers they’d like to deal with. The service does this by matching phone numbers against a large database of known callers, using data that the company has acquired in-house, along with a number of third party data vendors.
Despite the fact that RingRevenue launched in stealth only nine months ago, it has managed to sign up four of the top ten affiliate networks, including Commission Junction. Aside from its impressive roster of clients, RingRevenue has experience on its side — many of the teammembers previously helped create CallWave, an online telecommunications company that went public in 2004.
The NYT story about Google shutting down their radio and magazine ad ventures mentioned that Google tried putting campaign-specific phone numbers in print, but people didn’t use them. I wonder if/how this company is doing any better.
Congrats to Jason, Rob & Colin on the funding and the great work with CJ.
Big thanks to GRP, Rincon and Great Pacific for sharing the vision. We’re just getting started!
Great! Good work!
Congratulations on the success of the new company!
This is something for the RingRevenue guys who have managed to get a big bundle, but the impact of the services has yet spread out.
Congrats to RingRevenue! They will have to provide more value than pure technology for call tracking for affiliates, since there are several players that are not far from their technology, including ourselves.
The case studies demonstrating use and volume are key to them growing, not the patents or the founders being from CallWave– a good sign.
Congratulations RingRevenue on the funding
Sincerely pray they don’t help affiliate networkers in shaving leads. Shaving is killing the business.
what does “affiliate shaving” mean?
I like this concept. I can see another great publisher program in the making.
Doesn’t success still ultimately hinge on click through, or call through in this case?
This is just measure media. Is the core competency of the company simply that they can provision and deploy numbers cheaply so people can try pay per call campaigns?
I know telco and I know performance media, but this i don’t get. I’m assuming I’m missing something.
Congrats RingRevenue. Tracking calls for affiliates has become increasingly important for networks as well as individual advertisers that are looking to reward publishers for driving in-bound calls. thinkingVOICE also offers a white label solution for such networks – a solution that provides real time feedback (pixel firing and batch reporting) for each call to over a dozen affiliate networks today. This is the same platform we use for our own pay-per-call network (where we pay affiliates, mobile networks, and other publishers) for driving phone leads to our advertisers.
What it doesn’t explain is how the calls are tracked. They could be useful to even our network, but unless a different tel # is given to each publisher I am clueless how this could be tracked.
Typically calls are tracked via a unique number for each ad, one number with an extension, or with click to call (example where you can enter your number is at http://tinyurl.com/dhd29c). thinkingVOICE has been doing all 3 for many years. With our click to call tracking, not only can you track which affiliate/pub drives a call, you can also track which keywords are driving calls. Give me a call if you want to learn more or if you are interested in running some of our pay-per-call offers (including the life insurance offer) in your network.
Congrats to Jason and the team!
In these challenging economic times the founders of RingRevenue should be applauded for their determination and unique platform development. This is only the beginning for this talented group of individuals. The funding and industry relationships will place RingRevenue at the top of all conversations regarding affiliate networks! JOB WELL DONE ROB DUVA & Team!
We are partners with Ring Revenue. they have built a very powerful platform that integrates call centers and performance marketing in a very intelligent way.
big congratulations to RR and Jason !
Congratulations Jason and Rob! We’re excited about offering this capability to our clients, and even more jazzed to be building it on such a cool platform! Tracking calls like clicks is a very positive thing for the affiliate marketing industry. We all know affiliates drive calls, and your platform allows us to offer our clients the ability to pay on those calls!
What’s the difference between these guys and Ingenio? Isn’t this business facing the local business outreach problem that Ingenio, Yodle and others are facing? Not sure if CJ’s eCommerce-based clientele is a great match for pay-per-call
Congrats to RingRevenue and Commission Junction for providing this technology!
RevUpNet just launched it’s first client on CJ’s Pay-Per-Call platform and more launches are on the way. We’ve been blown away by the flexibility the platform provides when it comes to pricing calls and managing call-based campaigns. Our last test before taking our campaign live exceeded our expectations, the reports not only have some of the best UI available, but they also reported within seconds of call events occurring. Their complete feature set makes it possible for our clients to offer generous commissions per-call.
We’re looking forward to using this technology as a tool to help drive incremental sales and to attract new publishers to our clients affiliate programs. You can sign up for CJ’s Pay-Per-Call at http://www.cj.com/paypercall.