Patent ID: 8433048

Claim:
A call advertising system to allow advertisers to advertise telephone numbers and receive voice calls via the advertised telephone numbers, the call advertising system comprising: a processor; a memory; a campaign management component configured to: receive from an advertiser a telephone number, an amount the advertiser is willing to pay for a voice call routed to the telephone number, and one or more parameters of an advertising campaign of which the telephone number is a part, wherein the one or more parameters define a maximum number of voice calls that are to be routed to the advertiser telephone number or a period of time in which the voice calls are to be routed to the advertiser telephone number; provide the advertiser telephone number to a voice communications provider, wherein the voice communications provider causes the advertiser telephone number to be displayed to a user without determining whether the one or more parameters of the advertising campaign have been exceeded; and provide an indication to the voice communications provider of a deactivation of the advertiser telephone number, such that, after the deactivation, the voice communications provider does not route voice calls to the advertiser telephone number to the voice call routing component; a voice call routing component configured to: receive from the voice communications provider a voice call to be routed to the advertiser telephone number; determine the one or more parameters of an advertising campaign associated with the advertiser telephone number; and route the voice call to the advertiser telephone number if the voice call is received within the parameters of the advertising campaign; and a financial component configured to track the voice call and the amount, such that the advertiser may be charged or billed the amount for the voice call and that the voice communications provider may be credited or paid for the voice call.