Patent ID: 8687782

Claim:
A method in a computing system for estimating a number of calls that are associated with a publication channel, the method comprising: allocating a number of tracking phone numbers to be utilized in advertisements of a plurality of advertisers that are distributed across a plurality of publication channels; selecting a sample group of advertisements that are distributed via two or more publication channels, the sample group of advertisements being assigned at least one tracking phone number per advertiser for each publication channel that is used in the distribution of the sample group of advertisements; selecting a remaining group of advertisements that are distributed via the two or more publication channels, the remaining group of advertisements being assigned one tracking phone number per advertiser for all publication channels that are used in the distribution of the remaining group of advertisements; detecting calls made to the provided tracking phone numbers; analyzing detected calls associated with the sample group of advertisements in order to determine a distribution of calls across each of the two or more publication channels; and using the determined distribution of calls across each of the two or more publication channels in the sample group to estimate a number of calls distributed across the two more publication channels utilized for the remaining group of advertisements.