How To Generate Call Leads with Google Ads in 2025

It’s no secret that inbound phone calls are incredibly effective, converting up to 50% of callers across industries. Even in the age of AI chats and forms, when someone’s ready to buy or needs help ASAP, they pick up the phone. Call leads are powerful, and in 2025, they’re more valuable than ever. Why? Because they show intent. If someone calls you, they’re serious. Whether you’re generating calls from organic sources or paid advertising platforms like Google Ads, you have a great chance of converting a caller into a customer.

So, What Are Call Leads?

Call leads are simply potential customers who contact your business via phone after interacting with an ad. They’re hot leads, real people, real conversations, and real opportunities to close deals.

Why Call Leads Convert Better Than Other Leads

Forms get filled out, emails get ignored, but calls? They demand attention. They’re more direct, emotional, and faster. Plus, you can handle objections on the spot.

Speaking of Google Ads, the recent update of Google Call-Only Ads has passed almost unnoticed – very few businesses have talked about how it changed pay-per-call ads – yet it has brought ripples across lead generators and advertisers. 

Long story short, Call-Only Ads will become more flexible, have increased reach, and greater control. So if you like the change, you can double down on the new ad format – responsive search ads (RSAs) – and if you don’t, you can leverage other call generation options like, for example, call extensions within Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs). 

Numbers don’t lie: Even for the most successful e-commerce site, the web lead conversion rates are around 3%, while with call leads, you can get up to 10 to 20 times more conversions. The average check might also be higher, and you might collect some actionable caller insights.

Read on to learn how to generate call leads with Google Ads.

Option 1. Call-Only Ads

First things first: Call-Only Ads aren’t going anywhere – they haven’t been fully replaced by RSAs but rather upgraded to Google’s new RSA framework. In practice, this means Call-Only Ads – or simply call ads, as they’re now called in Google Ads – now have a similar structure (3 to 15 headlines of up to 30 characters, 2 to 4 descriptions of up to 90 characters) and AI optimization.

Likewise, you can still generate calls directly through clicks, but now you must provide the Final URL instead of a Display URL. The Final URL is the actual URL where leads are directed when they click on your ad, if they choose to visit your website instead of making a direct call.

Here’s an official notice from Google:

Call ads are being upgraded to responsive search ads to enable new features and simplify asset creation and management. The upgrade includes adding required assets, such as a landing page and a business name at the campaign or account level. After a certain period, you’ll no longer be able to create new call ads, and all newly created call ads will require a landing page. Existing call ads without a final URL won’t be automatically migrated.

Important: Call ads are designed specifically for mobile phones, so it’s almost useless to use them if your target audience is desktop users. Call ads can appear on desktops and tablets under certain conditions, but there’s no reason to make any bets on them. Likewise, cost-per-click is obviously going to be higher than for search ads because call ads are much more effective.

Industry-wise, call ads are great for urgent industries, where you need to solve your problem immediately and are usually willing to initiate a call without doing too much research, such as finance, healthcare, home services, specific insurance niches, etc.

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Here’s one final reservation: The rule of thumb is that call ads are displayed for branded search queries – the name of your company, partners, or competitors – rather than general queries. So if you’re generating organic calls from users unaware of your company, running call ads might not make sense. But then again, there are exceptions, so you might just try and see whether this type of advertising is more cost-effective than the alternatives.

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Here’s how to set up call ads in Google Ads:

1. Sign in with Google Ads and set up your basic account settings (time zone, currency, etc.). Make sure to enter the business phone numbers that you’re going to use for call ads and call tracking purposes. 
2. In “Tools & Settings -> Conversions -> New Conversion Action,” select “Phone Calls > Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads.” 
3. Click “Campaigns -> + New Campaign” and follow the on-screen instructions to choose the campaign objectives (“Leads” or “Phone Calls”), goals, and settings. Set locations, languages, budget, bidding, ad schedule, device targeting, and start and end dates. 
4. Set up an ad group. Name your campaign, enter the focus keywords you want the ad to appear for, the negative keywords you want the ad to prevent appearing for, and choose between Broad Match and Phrase Match to enable or disable keyword variations. 
5. Create your call ads. Choose “Call Ad” in the ad creation interface, enter ad details, your phone number, Final URL, Display URL, headlines, and descriptions. Optionally, enter the Verification URL and Call Reporting. Check your Ad Strength score: Poor, Average, Good, or Excellent. Review all settings and click “Publish” or “Save and Submit.”

It usually takes around 2 hours for Google to review call ad campaigns. Once approved, the ad starts running (check the “Ads & Extensions” tab). 

Remember, though, while you can still generate inbound business calls directly from call ads, you’ll no longer be able to create new call ads after a certain period (see the official notice above). Sooner or later – it may take several months to several years – you’ll have to direct potential callers to your landing page or website. So while you still can create call ads, and they’ll probably run for a while, it might be reasonable to think about how you can optimize the pages where call leads will land after call ads fully migrate to RSAs.

Option 2. Click-to-Call Extensions

Whether you’re running RSAs or DSAs, a call extension – an ad extension that adds a clickable phone number to your ad – will allow users to directly call your business without visiting a website or landing page. 

• When displayed on a mobile phone, call extensions appear below the ad’s description or to the right of the main ad content. 
• When displayed on a desktop or tablet, call extensions appear within the ad’s footer area without a clickable “Call” button. 
• After the 2025 update, call extensions may also show as a standalone button below the ad.

That said, call extensions are still less call-focused than call ads because the ads also have other user pathways. For example, potential call leads might click on Display URL or Final URL and land on your web page instead of making a call.

DSAs and Call Extensions

If you’re willing to delegate the campaign creation process to Google, Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are likely your best choice. Unlike Google Ads, DSAs are generated automatically, from headlines to descriptions to keywords.

Here’s how DSAs work: Google scans your website, creates ads based on the collected data, and directs call leads to the most relevant page. The only thing you do is write the descriptions for your ads, up to 2 descriptions of 90 characters each. And then you can add call extensions to enable direct calls.

Option 3. Local Service Ads (LSAs)

Strictly speaking, Local Service Ads don’t belong to Google Ads, but they are still a Google advertising product you might want to use if you’re a local business in one of the supported areas (U.S., UK, Canada, etc.) and industries:

• Home
• Business
• Health
• Learning
• Care
• Wellness
• Beauty
• Automotive

LSAs appear at the top of Google search results in return for local searches, like “electrician near me,” and charge you only when a user calls or sends you a message, with calls usually costing more. Call-wise, LSAs are tapable on mobile phones; on desktops, the displayed mobile phone isn’t clickable, so the user must manually dial the number to make a call.

How To Get The Most Out of Google Call Ads in 2025

Not all users who interact with your call campaigns make a call – some disengage while potentially retaining the purchase intent. Reengaging such users is usually more cost-effective than generating new leads, and you can do it by integrating Google Ads and Google Analytics 4.

Here’s how you can re-market bounced call leads:

1. Connect your Google Ads and GA4 accounts.
2. Define bounced leads in Google Ads by creating a new audience. For example, you can create a new audience based on ad clicks without calls, short call duration, or website or landing page visitors who didn’t call.
3. Set up custom events in GA4 for ad interactions – clicks, page views, etc. – and import them into Google Ads as the audiences you’d like to re-market.

There are a few other ways to retarget bounced leads from Google Ads Call Campaigns, so you can combine several strategies: run re-marketing campaigns with call assets in Search, Display, or Performance Max; utilize Local Service Ads to drive call traffic through geo-targeted ads; direct call leads to landing pages with trackable phone numbers; and some more.

The main point is that many of the bounced call leads still retain purchase intent, and even if it has subsided a bit, they are much warmer than cold audiences. No less importantly, retargeting bounced callers is generally cheaper than acquiring new call leads through Google Ads.

The Importance of Call Tracking for Google Call Campaigns

As a marketer, you know how important it is to collect data on your leads, especially inbound callers who are more likely to convert and are prone to spend more. So even though Google Ads does provide native call tracking through Google Forwarding Numbers (GFNs), it’s quite limited, so I’d suggest using a fully-fledged call tracking solution.

Here’s why you need a dedicated call tracking solution: Google attributes calls to campaigns and tracks basic metrics like the number of generated calls, call duration, and call source, but a dedicated call tracking platform can track things beyond that, like what keyword triggered a call, what device the caller is using, and how likely they are to convert based on their behavior.

With advanced call tracking insights, you can route your calls more effectively and give your sales rep a head start in the conversation. You can transfer call data in real-time to the operator that handles the call, so they know who is calling and what they need.

In fact, an operator may even have time to find a solution before the call, or at least they won’t repeat questions that were asked before. The synergy of a proprietary call tracking system, an advanced CRM, and Google Ads can help you generate purchase-ready calls at scale while optimizing the customer journey across channels and touchpoints.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Not Tracking Conversions Properly

If you don’t know what’s working, you’re burning cash. Always track calls.

Mismanaging Budget Allocation

Don’t spend equally across campaigns. Push more budget to high-converting keywords and ad groups.

Ignoring Call Quality

Not all calls are equal. Train staff to handle calls well. Bad customer service kills conversions.

Conclusion

For a call-reliant business, Google Call Ads is a great tool to generate purchase-ready call leads, and you can make your campaigns even more efficient by tracking, routing, and analyzing call leads in real-time and against past performance. An advanced call management software solution can help you make the most out of every caller, including calls that don’t convert on the first try.

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