Advertise in the Yellow Pages, and AT&T will track who calls you
A 2007 pitch for AT&T's ValuTrak program.
Consumers who value their privacy might not want to let their fingers do the walking.
AT&T tracks calls to many numbers advertised in the Yellow Pages, and Ma Bell supplies companies with regular reports detailing the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the people who called the advertised number.
Here’s how AT&T describes the ValuTrak program on its website:
ValuTrak is a unique, dedicated telephone number used for tracking the number of calls an AT&T Real Yellow Pages ad generates each month. This unique telephone number appears only in the AT&T Real Yellow Pages advertising program and is not listed anywhere else, including other forms of advertising.
The information from this unique telephone number is captured, compiled and stored in a Database where a monthly report is generated and forwarded to you, the advertiser.
AT&T spokeswoman Marisa Giller, of the Fleishman-Hillard public relations firm, said in an e-mail this month that the program doesn’t violate consumers’ privacy.
After all, the information the phone company compiles on behalf of Yellow Pages advertisers — name, number and address — could be gathered by using a Caller ID system, which records a caller’s name and number, and the White Pages, which lists addresses. Unlisted numbers don’t show up in the reports.
The program’s purpose, Giller said, is to demonstrate the effectiveness of Yellow Pages advertising.
“The service you’re talking about is essentially a caller ID technology to help Yellow Pages advertisers determine their ROI for placing an advertisement,” Giller said in the e-mail. “Here’s how it works: when a company places an ad with Yellow Pages, often times, they’ll set up a special number to list in the ad. That way, they can determine that any consumer who calls that number is calling as a result of the advertisement.”
I found out about the Valutrak program from Bill Haas, the once and future candidate and a former AT&T employee. He said that, in August 2008, he complained to a phone company executive that the program could be a PR nightmare for AT&T.
Haas is upset that AT&T is scaling back distribution of the residential phone directories it is required to publish, but at the same time monetizing the personal information published in those listings.
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
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Non-issue. Why report on this. So they know a number called them. If I do business with them, thell probably know my name and address too. WHO CARES!
I’ve never understood why people get so crazy over giving out a phone number. This has always been used for demographics and a way for companies everywhere to see who is shopping where and how to reach a market area. This is nothing new nor is there some conspiracy going on. Giving out a phone number is the least of all our problems. Personal information is everywhere; doc offices, credit applications, your financial instituion…does it not bother anyone the life now revolves around your social security number!? Phone number? “Who care” is dead on.
It’s a way to measure return on investment and hardly a cause for alarm. We’ve already imposed “Big Brother” on ourselves voluntarily with social networking sites like myspace and facebook. This is just a drop in the bucket.
Dittos. If I want to keep my number secret I’ll just bring a can of paint into the bathroom stall at Fast Eddie’s.
Add me to the ‘who cares’ list. If someone wants to withhold their name, number, and address, all they have to do is have their number un-listed.
Information that is published in a free listing given out to everyone, whether they want it or not, is hardly personal information.
No one cares about this — this is just making what the business could do themselves easier for them.
Also, no one cares about the white pages. More and more people have cell phones — which aren’t in them anyway. White pages are just landfill fodder these days.
b - ‘Course you know you have to *pay* to have your number not be listed. That’s like having to pay some punk to keep yourself off his junk email list.
Any smart business person these days knows that they MUST track ALL forms of advertising. I agree with the statement below…this is a non-issue and totally slanted towards creating an epidemic of fear. The company is not ‘monetizing’ based on the ‘data’ that it’s collecting. It’s tracking a simple number. Calls in and then applying business logic like call conversion, profit margin and customer value. Essentially, it’s saying…ok, I got 100 calls. Of every 100 calls, I make about 25 sales and each sale is worth $2000. If that’s the case, then I just made $50,000. If my profit margin is 25%, then $12,500 of that is profit. If I then factor in my ad cost of say $2500, then I just made $5 for every $1 I spent in the Yellow Pages. All that math and I never had to look at caller id information…I just simply needed to know the number of calls to my business generated from that advertisement to see if it was worth it or not for next year.
Agree with others…..this is a non issue that no one with a brain would care about since the data is readily available through other means any way. Of course advertisers could do this tracking themselves. Basically they are paying AT&T to do it for them.
Big deal, it’s just Caller ID with a reverse number lookup function. I do this using the internet when I see a new number on my Caller ID at home. All that this program is doing is outsourcing an administrative task to AT&T that the company could do on their own for free.