For many businesses, form submissions only account for a portion of leads that come through the web. Phone calls can also be crucial to gaining customers, and some businesses find that getting people on the phone right away can be the most valuable way to close a deal. Call extensions allow you to direct a user to click-to-call on mobile or dial a trackable number that they see on a desktop.

In this article, we’ll cover setting up and viewing data for AdWords call extensions.

Setting Up a Call Extension

To create a call extension, navigate to Ads & Extensions from within your AdWords account.

Click the blue “plus” symbol to create an extension, and select Call Extension from the list of options that appears.

In the setup screen, you can choose to add your call extension on an account, campaign, or ad group level. Next, choose the country for your number and enter the number into the text box.

Next, you can choose to turn call reporting on or off. If call reporting is turned on, AdWords will show a custom forwarding number in the place of your original number. In turn, you’ll be able to see more detailed data on call performance and also be able to track calls as conversions.

If you’d like to track calls as conversions, check the “Count conversions” box. Here, you can choose to use the default call conversion that AdWords sets up (“Calls from ads”) or you can set up your own conversion. You can customize this to include only calls that are at least a certain duration (more on this in a bit).

Check the “device preference” box if you prefer to show the number for mobile users. Note that with the box checked, AdWords will be more likely to show a number with mobile ads, but isn’t guaranteed to exclude numbers completely from desktop. If for some reason you only want to show the number for mobile users, you’d need to set up a separate mobile campaign (with desktop/tablet bid modifiers decreased 100%).

Under advanced options, you can set a schedule for ads to show. First, you can choose to set a specific start and end date. For instance, you may have a limited-time promotion for which you want users to call in, but you don’t normally show a number.

Next, you can set a recurring schedule for the number to show within set timeframes each week. This option is helpful for those who prefer to limit phone calls to business hours, ensuring that customers only call when a person is available to answer.

Finally, save your extension to make it active.

Editing Call Conversions

To edit call conversions, click the wrench icon in the top menu and go to Conversions.

In the list of conversions that appears, select “Calls from ads” (or whatever custom name you may have given call conversions).

Now, you can edit conversion settings. Enter an amount in the “Value” field if you have a figure for average revenue per call. If you’d like to avoid counting duplicate calls, choose “One conversion” under “Count.” To count only calls that go over a certain length of time, enter a number of seconds into the “Call length” field. In this case, our client determined that calls of 3 minutes or more were most likely to lead to business, so we entered 180 seconds.

Finally, select “Done” to save your changes.

Tracking Performance

If you’ve opted to track conversions for calls, you can segment to see data while viewing campaign performance.

Click the “Segment” button (which looks like three lines stacked on top of each other) and choose Conversions > Conversion action.

Here, “Calls from ads” delineates these conversions from others that occurred through forms or additional sources. You can see conversions, cost/conv., conversion rate, and other data specific to calls.

To see further data on phone calls, add the columns under “Call details.” You can see total phone calls, phone impressions, and PTR (phone-through rate).

Hopefully, you found this article helpful in getting started with call extensions! For more on making the most call extensions, see our article on call bid adjustments.

How have you used call extensions in your campaigns, and what results do you get from phone calls? Share in the comments below!