MSearchGroove

Improving the relevancy of results is key to delivering the next generation of mobile search advertising services. This special three-part podcast series - sponsored by JumpTap, a white-label mobile search and advertising company– kicks off with Adam Soroca, JumpTap Vice President and General Manager of Search and Advertising Services.

The tectonic shift away from plain-vanilla mobile search to delivering the right results to the right users - more importantly, displaying these results together with targeted advertising the user finds genuinely useful - changes all the rules. The end-game isn’t about teaming up with branded search providers to provide a list of links; it’s about partnering with search and advertising companies that will allow mobile operators to control and improve the data they collect from users while they search, shop and interact with content and apps, on and off-portal.

Against this backdrop, any strategy that surrenders control of this data to a branded search/portal provider, for example, is fatally flawed. This is the view of Adam Soroca, JumpTap Vice President and General Manager of Search and Advertising Services. MSG caught up with Adam to learn why relevancy is king and the ways operators and advertisers can harness targeting to drive paid search revenues.

Listen to the podcast here. [10:55]

Search [r]evolution: Deployments with numerous mobile operators, including AllTel, Boost, Virgin Mobile, and most recently, Telefonica in Spain, have proven the pivotal importance of targeting and validated the inextricable link between search and advertising. “We believe that search is one of the greatest theaters of understanding user profiles. Are they financial enthusiasts? Are they technophiles? All of that is incredibly valuable information that is gathered through search history…..In terms of the content that we’ve made accessible, we now blend together on-deck, off-deck and structure data. We make sure the user can find anything that they’re looking for so we’re answering the broadest set of queries possible.”

Dynamic market: “Paid search has proven to be a highly effective means for advertisers to reach a targeted audience ….The user finds what they’re looking for, the advertiser has the opportunity to sell product to a highly interested audience and the carrier, who is bringing that ecosystem together to match the advertiser with the subscribers via a tool like JumpTap, has the ability to make money from putting that ecosystem together. And it creates a virtuous circle where the mobile subscriber searches for more things.”

Risky business: “There’s no question that mobile operators are faced with very strategic decisions on how to play in this emerging arena. Since search is the gateway to the next era, operators are faced with the decision to partner with a branded search provider such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or select a white label provider. And we believe Google, Yahoo, Microsoft represent a significant threat to the mobile operator’s business because the long-term fundamental interests are not aligned.”

The best data wins: “Regardless of whether players like Yahoo offer a white label or a co-branded solution or not, these companies, if they do work with a mobile operator, will accumulate valuable search information that will help them to improve their own consumer sites, take the subscriber understanding away from the carriers and we believe that white label is the route to go because this data is owned today and belongs with the mobile operator…. And JumpTap’s key mission is to ensure that carriers retain this information. We help them build the traffic that digs into the profile information and enriches it, and we ensure that the data doesn’t end up in the hands of companies that ultimately want to improve their own consumer destination and siphon the traffic away from the carrier.”

Good behavior: The JumpTap offer combines three types of targeting: demographic, contextual (location and how the customer is using the mobile device at that point in time) and behavioral. “The other big component in evolution that we’ve introduced into our product offering is this application of behavioral profiles that we’re able to retain through search in order to serve ads on the carrier’s portal. These are things like linking the search, the purchase and the browsing history to the targeting of these ads. So this takes some of the most untargeted inventory, and allows behavioral targeting to deliver very targeted and focused ads to increase the CPM.”

2008 trends: More publishers, more content and more targeting. “The dream is there, the inventory is there and the advertisers are going to demand to see progress, especially as the volume of subscribers who are interacting with their mobile devices grows.” And look for new models to monetize search. In a word, operators and brands are going to develop “new monetizable events” - in tune with the user’s behavioral profile - that will allow the carrier to deliver targeted and valuable messages throughout the user’s experience. “I think that’s setting up for a wonderful opportunity for advertisers to build progressive ad campaigns that touch users in many different ways on their mobile device.”

• Posted in
• Personalization, Recommendation, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search, Podcasts

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