MSearchGroove

The following is an in-depth examination of the mobile search and content delivery landscape based on the competitive intelligence white paper presented at the March 2007 mobile search conference.

1. Mobile content: More effort than its worth?
With an avalanche of pre-packaged and user-generated mobile content slated to come online this year, subscribers can’t say they dont have choice. But they can complain about the tedious navigation process they have to endure to find, access and buy content they like.
Recent usability studies, from Sweden’s Mobile Matrix, argue mobile portals must bring content to users within six clicks. The same studies conclude that a whopping 65 percent of content is positioned too far from the home page, making it invisible to users. Indeed, the vast majority of content may as well not be on offer because it is buried deep in confusing – oftentimes counter-intuitive – hierarchical menus and positioned too many clicks from the portal home page. A recent Informa Telecoms & Media benchmarking study found that users typically have to click through 10-40 screens, and spend more than two minutes to download some of the most popular ringtones or games. Mobile devices with their screen-size limitations and restricted input capabilities only exacerbate the problem.

Until now, many operators have tried to solve the problem by reorganizing their portals and placing similar content only a few clicks away from the portal home page. However, in practice, this reorganization technique is not the best approach to take. While it does help to group similar content together and label it as such, this approach also ignores other important variables such as content popularity, frequency and freshness.

It also can’t cope with the sheer volume of content on offer. Put simply, as the amount of content grows, grouping content according to any method no matter how logical will automatically lead to an increase in click distance, or at the very least a dissatisfactory mobile experience. An industry rule of thumb from the fixed Internet was content providers lose half their audience to frustration at every additional click it takes them to find what they want. Why should the mobile Internet be any different?

1.1 The search for answers

Understanding users can’t buy content if they can’t find it, an increasing number of mobile operators and content providers are scrambling to offer mobile search capabilities, as well as an array of tools, that will encourage users to explore more of the content at their finger tips. The raft of recent announcements, involving market giants such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and a growing number of white-label search providers including InfoSpace, Fast Search & Transfer, Medio Systems, JumpTap and Mobile Content Network (MCN) shows carriers and content companies are clearly excited about mobile search.

Although it’s early days, mobile search is picking up steam, and the usage figures are encouraging. M:Metrics, a U.S.-based company specialized in measuring consumer consumption of mobile content and applications, recently reported 15 percent of users in the U.S. access Internet content on their phones.

More good news comes from Ipsos Insight, which has found that the mobile phone is well on its way to becoming the dominant Internet platform. It reports 28 percent of mobile phone owners worldwide had browsed the Internet on a wireless handset in 2006, up slightly from 25 percent at the end of 2004. France and the UK exhibit the strongest increase, but Japan also shows rapid growth.

China leads the pack when it comes to mobile search, according to new research from iResearch, a Chinese information consulting company. It estimates the number of mobile search users in China will more than double to reach 71 million this year. A whopping 127 million will use mobile search in 2008. The report also predicts a strong interest in search as more content-rich services, such as mobile video and mobile TV, come online.

By 2010, the gap between the average number of searches that a user does on their desktop versus the number of searches they do on their mobiles will vanish, observes Chetan Sharma, President of Chetan Sharma Consulting, a strategic advisory firm. Today, he estimates, desktop search outpaces mobile search by a ratio of 3:1. But the revenue potential of the mobile search market in the U.S. alone is set to reach a staggering $2.5 billion in 2010, up from just $100 million in 2007. And these estimates don’t include enterprise mobile search, a vertical poised for growth as more road warriors demand remote access to information and applications on-the-fly.

However, plain-vanilla mobile search the approach that delivers a long list of blue links to users’ mobile phones – will not deliver a satisfactory user experience. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach from the Web that blatantly ignores the needs of individual users for search results that matter to them. Personalized mobile search - which caters to the individual and collects clues they leave, such as their reading patterns, their viewing preferences and their download history, as well as their action and location at that moment in time is the superior model. It provides operators the basis for new and lucrative segmentation strategies, as well as targeted mobile advertising campaigns.
In recognition of the trend to more personalized mobile search, most major players are sharpening their focus on technologies that will deliver the right content to the right users.

Yahoo!’s new oneSearch, a Web 2.0-type search engine, picks up on users’ intent, intuits the information they want and then presents the relevant content, grouped by subject, in synopsis form; Medio Systems’ solution combines search and recommendation technology to proactively suggest similar content to users based on an analysis of their content preferences and intent; InfoSpace is revamping its offer to deliver a more relevant and more comprehensive mobile search experience; Fast is pursuing a strategy of ‘zero-search,’ which will serve up content to users based on their actions and where they are possibly eliminating the need for a search box forever.

Moreover, a number of vendors are coming out of stealth mode with mobile search solutions that, like an electronic concierge, attempt to deliver users genuinely useful content (relevant to their context) - even before they ask for it. Leiki, a Finnish developer of intelligent Web and mobile services, offers a patented technology that combines real-time learning, profiling and personalization to help users explore content that they might never have known existed. Denmark’s MobilePeople goes beyond personalized mobile search to personalize the phone, learning over time to display desired content, services and frequent search queries as icons high in the mobile phone menu. And the list goes on.

Clearly, mobile search has moved to the next level. Expect the focus in 2007 to be on finding, not browsing.

2. Software solutions with the personal touch

However, mobile search isn’t the only method available. In fact, many media companies and brands fear mobile search schemes - such as paid search, which showcases content from the company that pays the most for a top-notch spot in the results could lure users away from the very sites many content companies have bet their bottom line to build. Operators, frustrated by mobile search models that take the lion�s share of the ad revenues, are also investigating alternatives.

One approach comes in the form of on-device software solutions that effectively automate and personalize the delivery and display of mobile content directly on the user’s device. By downloading the software to their phones, users gain 24/7 access to the content as well as updates, promotions or special offers.

Put another way, the client software leverages the handset’s capabilities to deliver a more appealing user experience, increase service awareness and streamline content purchasing.

This new breed of companies is popularly referred to as On-Device Portal providers (ODPs), after the milestone ARCChart report (On-Device portals: The next step beyond WAP in data service monetization- November 2005) that discovered the new growth market.

Andreas Constantinou, author of the report, counts over 25 vendors in this emerging space, including Action Engine, ChangingWorlds, Cibenix, Comverse, InFusio, mPortal, Nellymoser, Qualcomm, RefreshMobile, Silk Mobile and Volantis. The market leader is SurfKitchen, which has been selected by over 20 operators worldwide. The company’s software is also pre-installed on 60 percent of handsets being shipped today.

2.1 Follow the leader

ODP software, installed directly on the device, reduces the click-distance and takes the pain out of content discovery. It delivers users a more compelling content experience for a variety of reasons:

• The software is specifically designed to fetch content, render it for the device in use and allow users to interact with the content on their terms.
• Because the software can proactively present cached content, it effectively blurs the boundary between an offline and online experience, presenting the user with what appears to be an always-on experience on their mobile phones.
• Depending on the vendor, client software on the device can also interact with core handset capabilities, such as messaging, to present the user with an easy-to-understand dashboard view of mobile services.
• It can also store information on the device, making it available to users even when their wireless connection is not. In some cases, the software can even remember users’ most recent requests, learn their preferences and usage patterns, and use this insight to deliver personalized and customized content experiences.

Moving forward, operators and content companies can’t afford to rely on search and user-pull to clinch the deal; they will have to consider other technologies and techniques, such as those offered by ODP providers, to push content to users based on their profiles, preferences and purchasing history.

3. Highly ‘recommended’ approaches

In an effort to deliver the right users the right content, an increasing number of content companies, as well as search engine providers, are also developing and deploying so-called recommendation engines. This technology modelled on the approach of online bookseller Amazon, effectively suggests content on the basis of the individual user’s past preferences or on the basis of what a user’s peers consumed, or both.

However, deploying discovery solutions in the mobile environment is not straightforward, and solutions cannot be ported from the Internet. Mobile recommendation engines also have to identify which users have which devices, and translate the content recommendation into what is appropriate for each user and each device. This means reaching a balance between the content that users might like and the content they can actually access on their make and model of handset.

Recommendation engines are particularly well suited to assist users in the search for entertainment content they are likely to appreciate. After all, mobile search is patently ill-suited to deliver mobile entertainment. (How would a user search for ‘underground hip-hop’ or simply ‘more music like the last track?’ It can’t.)

AgentArts, Alatto, ChoiceStream, Gracenote, mPortal, PurpleAce and Sony Network Services are just a few of the companies jockeying for position in this emerging market. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

3.1 Community drive

Some companies plan to take this a huge step further, building hybrid approaches that promise to link users not only with content they like, but ultimately with users who share their interests and passions. MyStrands, a U.S.-based provider of content discovery and recommendation technology, has developed what it calls a ’social recommendation engine.’

Put simply, the company’s patented technology relies on the wisdom of crowds to recommend the right music content to the right users. It then analyzes how people listen to and organize their music and learns from these patterns to suggest the right content to the right users in real-time.

Handset manufacturers, riding the tide of consumer interest in MP3 players and mobile phones turned digital music players, have also boarded the recommender bandwagon. Nokia and Motorola have taken the wraps off the industry’s more ambitious approaches.

4 Fast forward

While search, discovery and recommendation approaches, based on customer information such as page views and downloads, will no doubt be an important part of content-selling strategies going forward, it may well be the interactions with, and suggestions from, the tight-knit communities users know and trust that matter most.

Indeed, a recent survey from Jupiter Research shows 64% of users will try a service or content recommended by a friend, and 69% will pass what they like along to between two and six friends.

Against this backdrop, the real power of search and discovery may be about much more than encouraging users to interact with content; it may be about enabling them to create mobile communities around the content they seek and share together. Witness the growth of mobile social networking sites and the emergence of the We generation. You (we!) are even on the cover of TIME.

Just as search has become the de facto interface to content on the fixed and mobile Internets, so social networks have become the entry-point to a much greater and richer user experience. In fact, they stand to replace search as the interface to content.

A recent Hitwise study reveals social networking sites are already the Web’s fastest growing category, with one in 20 Internet visits destined for a social networking site during the month of October 2006, nearly double the proportion of traffic a year ago. More importantly, social sites drive traffic to other destinations on the Web. Shopping and classified sites, for instance, received 2.4% of their visits directly from MySpace in September 2006 –an 83% increase since March.

Whatever the mix, personalization and recommendation will be must-have features of content services going forward. Indeed, search and discovery will be about more than finding content according to keywords and concepts such as music or sports. Finding and sharing content with people who have mutual interests will be the next killer app. And social search may be the service that marks the dawn of mobile Web 3.0.

Peggy Anne Salz, a brave new voice in the fast-paced mobile content market, is the author of Mobile Search & Content Discovery the first industry report to explore content discovery and search engine technologies and the ways companies can use them to monetize the Long Tail of hit-and-miss mobile content.

• Posted in
• Personalization, Recommendation, Mobile Social Networking, On-Device Portals, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, White Papers

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