By Dev Bhatia

In 1998, leading Web marketers and ecommerce companies pioneered the concept of clickstream optimization. On the Web, user interactions that began with banner and text advertisements could be monitored through the entire process to completion of an online sale.

Tied back to the cost of placing that ad, clickstream optimization could help marketers improve the efficiency of these processes to deliver profitable and scalable sales campaigns on the Web. Thus rationalized and proven effective, Web advertising thrived.

Fast forward to 2009.

Now, pioneers are figuring out how to make the mobile Web profitable for publishers, advertisers and marketers.

In this medium, the answer is callstream optimization. The callstream is the path a user takes from initial interaction through to sale, and on the mobile Web, the path is very different than online. Here, it is at once far more complicated, and far more rewarding, than online.

Marketers who master callstream optimization will manage to become industry leaders. They will not only create giant sales campaigns, but in the process, deliver results which will help shape and link two very different industries ? mobile advertising and teleservices.

On the surface, these two industries are far apart.

Banner hear
Mobile advertising firms have raised tens of millions in venture capital dollars over the past few years. Mobile advertising is projected to grow to a big business over the next decade, as more and more U.S. consumers use their mobile handsets to access and use the mobile Web.

Powered by the iPhone and demand for interactive applications on every handset, the future is bright, indeed.

Teleservices, on the other hand, is an industry which might best be described as headed in the opposite direction.

A mature, multibillion dollar industry, teleservices has stagnated in the United States as low cost offshore providers have pressured margins, while at the same time, outbound calling restrictions have capped demand for services.

These two industries are about to be linked as never before, in a symbiotic relationship which will help each other in ways few might have imagined.

This is because what works on mobile, better than anything else, is banners linked to inbound call capability.

Consumers first click an ad banner on a publisher site such as ESPN, then go to a landing page to see more information from the advertiser and finally select the click-to-call button to learn more.

By doing this, they immediately dial to the advertiser. Suddenly, these banners become inbound sales generators, delivering self-selected prospects to call centers. The phones start ringing, and just in time for many call centers.

The growth of this click-to-call channel could not have happened any sooner for the mobile ad industry either.

While venture dollars flowed just two years ago, those dollars are pretty scarce right now.

Many mobile advertising startups, including those who raised multiple rounds of financing, are now struggling to rationalize themselves. Getting to sustained positive cashflow is not a given.

The ranks of early advertisers, such as ringtone and mobile content businesses, who themselves were often funded with venture capital, are thinning.

The advent and growth of click-to-call marketing not only provides a much-needed new market, but establishes a baseline for what a mobile ad is worth.

From now on, the value of a mobile ad is tied to the value of an inbound lead. Big industries, including telecommunications, financial services, home security and education services pay handsomely for inbound leads to acquire their new customers.

So why is not click-to-call already huge? Because it is hard.

It is not like the mobile ad networks have not tried click-to-call. Some of the biggest, including AdMob and Jumptap, enable marketers to rapidly create click-to-call campaigns all by themselves. The problem is that these campaigns rarely work.

So what?s missing? Callstream optimization.

The right call
Just as ad dollars spent on the Internet prior to clickstream optimization often failed to deliver a sensible return-on-investment, most dollars spent on mobile advertising still fail to deliver an ROI unless marketers follow strict rules of engagement. They must manage and optimize the entire callstream.

This is not just hard, it is harder than even the online counterpart.

Online, companies developed protocols and software to manage an entirely digital process ? banner, landing page, checkout.

But in mobile, the process is not entirely digital. It starts with banners on sites, which is good, but rapidly turns into calls over the voice network, answered by live agents. So it is a hybrid of a digital and labor-driven experience.

To optimize, marketers must master everything from banner placement to interactive voice response to call center staffing and training. No easy task. And no wonder many click-to-call campaigns fail.

Companies which practice callstream optimization have tackled this problem head-on. They have built proprietary technology to not just serve mobile advertisements and landing pages, but also to manage what happens next.

These companies track call duration, IVR flow, and queue time. They spend a lot of time on mobile-specific staffing and training.

Because call center utilization is an essential component of profitability, mobile campaigns must be scaled differently.

Spikes in advertisements are bad, because they lead to high hold times and low conversions. Managing the entire value chain requires a significant investment, and the learning curve is steep.

Put another way, callstream optimization is not for everyone. But those who can figure it out, like the early pioneers who saved Web advertising, will contribute greatly to the long-term success of mobile advertising.

Dev Bhatia is CEO of Tyrannosaurus Inc., a mobile direct response firm in Spring Valley Lake, CA. Reach him at