What’s next for search? Certainly, the race for geographically relevant listings and placement within mobile technologies are at the forefront of every marketer’s mind of late. But flaws in search technology and ad formats are beginning to drive the next evolution of search.
A likely parallel in the history of our technology sector exists with today’s search industry. In the post-competitive apocalypse of the tech industry, only a few key players remained. Every entrepreneur’s dream then became developing the next great component of Microsoft, so they could sell their little startup and achieve indescribable wealth. A few dreamers have already begun to make some noise in search, possibly with the hope of becoming the next member of the Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft continuum.
Google and Overture are dabbling in many of the new frontiers, such as personalized search, local, shopping and networking, but have an inherent handicap in their size, which negatively effects speed to market. Ultimately, we will see many search dreamers get acquired and their technology either squashed or integrated. Until then, I am pleased to offer a nod to the innovators -- who they are, what they do and how their technology may affect advertisers.
The Search is On
There are lots of really neat ways to look for things on the Web. Want to compare Plasma TV costs? Go to a shopping engine. Need to find out how you might possibly be two friends away from Britney Spears? Check in with your favorite social networking site. Want a mini-browser searchable interface? Download the Google toolbar.
If you want to add a new dimension to search, innovators are developing cutting edge platforms that can show you multiple search resources at once, help you decide which results to view based on what your friends liked, or even learn about you based on previous search habits. Most of these innovations have little or no effect on advertising models (for the moment) since much of the specialized content appears using existing listing data -- sponsored or otherwise -- rolled into one destination.
Create a Search Experience
There are quite a few players out there trying to address the problem of search efficiency. Grokker, for example, is a downloadable interface, which according to the Web site “provides robust information collection, management, and delivery solutions for individual users, e-businesses, research organizations and enterprises of any size.”
Similarly, GuruNet and Vivisimo offer new and innovative ways to collect search content into an easy to digest platform. Last week, eMarketer ran an interview with GuruNet’s chairman Bob Rosenschein and within minutes, I had at least a dozen emails from clients inquiring about advertising opportunities on the GuruNet platform.
Chances are, if you have paid search components in your SEM initiative, you are already advertising on many of these platforms since listings are picked up from existing search sites. The general consensus on building a proprietary ad platform for these “experience generators” is placed as a second to advancing the value for end users.
Mac users need not worry their pretty little heads even though many of the new tools are built solely for the Windows environment. Mac has its own search interface called Sherlock that brings the searching activity into a content-specific interface. Again, paid and natural results are delivered from existing providers.
Social Distinction and News, and Nostradamus Was a Hack
In the trend started by Friendster, Eurekster uses a popularity ranking system based on user exhibited behavior. For example, when the user clicks on a result listing it achieves a higher, perceived relevance and ranking. The perceived power of Eurekster comes when the user starts signing up friends and listing ranking begins to take shape around how your connected friends may have searched. Sounds like a scary concept to me. Once again, ads are provided by existing paid search providers.
Feedster, on the other hand, intends to wade through the massive amounts of information that exist in personal weblogs or “blogs.” Like Eurekster, the value here appears to be in the universe of broad-based user opinion or interpretation. Since Feedster has only organic content, if you want to advertise in Feedster results, you’ll have to buy the listing from them.
News on the Web is hot; trying to find what you want is not. Topix uses a multiplicitous categorization process to rank news information according to geography and subject matter. It also allows users to select criteria for news searches. Topix has ad opportunities galore and one needs only contact the company for details.
Mooter is an Australian search site, which seeks to interpret user intent based on psychological modeling. That is to say, make a prediction of user behavior with basic industrial psychology delivered in a “this is what we think you wanted, sort of way. Mooter is still very much in beta, so an ad platform is not yet available.
The Brains
What’s wrong with contextual search? For starters, reporting leaves a lot to be desired and content matching techniques are not exactly what it should be. In the pay-per-click syndication world, Kanoodle is a big contextual innovator, and Quigo is working with providers like Overture to help with ad delivery, but what else is out there?
Industry Brains has been pioneering contextual search since before people knew what contextual search was. “We’re enabling bidding on premium content categories as opposed to keyword search terms allowing advertisers to track each and every category independently,” says Industry Brains CEO, Erick Matlick.
This intelligent platform enables publishers to sell content for themselves or via a co-branded relationship. Industry Brains has about 75 publisher relationships at the moment, which include powerhouse destinations like Business Week.
What’s Next?
How about an implant in your frontal lobe? You could search all memories at once, and immediately cross-reference them against Web content. Too far out? How about technology that enables a rich media formatted message to be delivered via search listing roll over?
For now, creating a new search experience, innovating how ads are delivered, or helping sort through news may offer users a single source of information in lieu of using many different search sites for individual activities. At the moment, searchers use different search engines to find information and advertisers rely upon big players to innovate ad platforms. Sure big providers like Google, Yahoo! and MSN are dipping their toes into the innovation category, but in the end it seems the little guy with a dream will play a critical role in bringing us one step closer to the utopian search society.
About the author: iMedia search columnist Kevin Ryan’s current and former client roster reads like a “who’s who” in big brand: Rolex Watch, USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Panasonic Services and the Hilton Hotels brands, to name a few.
Meet Kevin Ryan at Ad:Tech May 24-26th, 2004 and the iMedia Search Marketing Tour.
