MSearchGroove

I didn’t attend the iHollywood Search & Media conference – but I’m beginning to wish I had… several exces have told me the panels were packed with worthwhile speakers (a special attraction was a real-time, real-life focus group). But no worry. The organizers have promised to make the videos available soon – so watch this space for the best of the show.

In the meantime, check out David Berkowitz’s blog here and his worthwhile observations in this post (via MediaPost). Good news for those (myself included) who believe in the pivotal role of discovery in the content consumption experience. As David observes: “Everyone wanted to talk about discovery, not search.” What’s more, business titles are beginning to reflect this tectonic shift. Case in point: Randall Hounsell, Comcast Cable Communications Management’s vice president of search and discovery. “Though discovery marketing may be a little too nebulous to perch neatly alongside search marketing, these search and discovery pioneers should find themselves part of a larger club soon.”

How do users get to content? First, there’s search. This is followed by browsing (by category, channel, popularity etc..) and discovery (which David subdivides into automated discovery, where recommendation engines suggest content based on behavior and relevant key words, and user-referred discovery, which is simple word-of-mouth). “With video search, searchers may be more valuable than browsers or discoverers, but there won’t be as much of a bounty on consumers who search. With video, publishers want consumers to gorge on as much content as possible, and automated discovery is the most efficient way for publishers to hog consumers’ attention.” (Looking ahead, this will no doubt be the aim in the mobile video space.)

David also recounts the highlights of a panel he chaired on video search. He writes: iBreak.com CEO Keith Richman revealed Break.com can only fulfill a small percentage of searches, largely because the searches for copyrighted content that isn’t available there. When someone searches Break.com for “South Park episodes,” no search results appear, but there are two text ads served by Google. Richman said he can earn more from someone clicking an ad than if someone were to watch a “South Park” clip on his site. In other words, it’s more profitable for him when he can’t give his visitors what they want. (!)

Other conference coverage (from Erik Sass via MediaPost) makes a strong case for voice-recognition. But is it the future of mobile search? Michael (Luni) Libes, chief architect and co-founder of white-label mobile search provider Medio Systems, seems to think so. (FYI: Medio provides voice search to Verizon Wireless.) He reports voice-based mobile search has better than 90 percent success in recognizing spoken words–and even more for words that it “knows” (i.e., pre-programmed vocabulary). In his view voice-in, visual-out, is the model most users prefer.

But not everyone agreed with Luni’s pro-voice views. Doug Leeds, VP of product management for Ask.com, argued that voice recognition is a case of close, but no cigar. As he put it: “I don’t think it’s going to be the killer app for mobile search.” (It figures that Leeds – true to his company’s heritage in text search – was more upbeat on other technologies. In his view the “killer app will be better data entry devices”– preferably featuring larger keyboards and touch screen interfaces.)

Getting past the debate on input technologies, the post reminds us that the real challenge will be in developing mobile search schemes will broad appeal and take-up. “That’s the big barrier going forward,” according Darcia de Freitas, Microsoft product manager for Live Search for mobile. “Users expect search to be free, as it is to them today on the PC. Free to them means an ad-funded model to the rest of us.”

• Posted in
• Recommendation, Multimodal Search, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Content Discovery

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