Mobile search works best when users know what they want – quite an assumption when it comes to entertainment content that often changes faster than users can keep up. And then there’s context to consider. When do users want to buy a piece of music? Generally speaking, users get the idea when they hear the music on the radio or see the clip on TV. And most times they don’t know the track or the artist; they just know they heard something they like and they want it NOW.

To clinch the deal Hingi, provider of mobile impulse commerce solutions and services for any broadcast-related content, has launched Hear It ‘N Get It. The server-based content discovery service that helps users to identify and buy music and related
content they hear on the radio or see on TV within two-clicks. In a nutshell, Hingi, which has developed its own music recognition and associative search technology, monitors radio and TV broadcast stations, generating an accurate and real-time playlist for each channel. In a parallel process, the system searches for other related content including ringtones, MP3 tracks and video clips.

When a user hears a song they like they send an SMS with the station name to a short code. On the receiving end, Hingi’s server extracts the details on the track played at that moment in time (title, artist and related content) and sends the link to the user’s mobile phone. The Mobile Entertainment Forum recently short listed the service, which it judged as the first to encourage content discovery and the all-important impulse buy. So far, the service is live with Israeli mobile operators Cellcom, Orange and Pelphone.

I caught up with Eyal Katz, Hingi CEO, to learn his rollout plans for the service in Europe and his vision for mobile advertising. Look for Hingi to expand target the U.K. market first (it will have a beta ready before end-2007) and then sharpen its focus on the U.S. market. Eyal also pointed out that media companies and advertisers are taking a second look at the white-label service, recognizing the value of its built-in ability to deliver targeted contextual mobile advertising. “The technology part of this [solution] works and we are building the partnerships [to deliver it] at the moment.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Right place, right time: “We are about contextual search – but in context to where you are and what you see or hear. So, if you tell me that you’re watching MTV, I can give you [results] related to what’s on now on MTV.” Unlike other mobile search and content discovery schemes that try to guess the user’s intent based on past behavior, Hingi suggests similar content to the user by “combining the content the user is exposed to with the information we already have on the user.” The service is focused on music now, but it can also deliver content related to sports, news and live events.

Monetizing the long and short tail: Being able to pitch long tail content such as top 10 tracks and ringtones in a couple of clicks is not necessary the sign of a superior content discovery service. Because popular content is usually placed high up in the mobile phone menu it’s not rocket science to guide the user to the destination that sells it. “But if you want to go into the long tail, But, to millions of songs to the millions of content items, to the relevant sports story or to the relevant news story, or to the relevant advertisement…then you have to [have input] that will give you some idea of user context.”

Finger on the trigger: “We sit on the trigger, and based on this trigger, and on your contextual state, we try to give it to you within two clicks….Our solution is different from other solutions by the fact that actually we intercept this need on one hand, and connect it with the request from the user from the other hand, and offer them the relevant content.”

Mobile search makes sense: Eyal stresses that the service complements mobile search and can effectively piggy-back the provided by any search engine a mobile operator or content provider chooses to use. “We focus on content sales. We work in part in cooperation with the search results of the operators and, in other cases, [the search results offered] as an independent service.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Music, Mobile Search, Personalization, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.