Looking over my notes and stats confirms that the Visiongain mobile search conference and awards dinner (MSA) was the place to be last week. Rather than overwhelm you with a summary post, I’ve decided to publish the key points from each presentation separately, including slides of some stats from Vodafone that remained a topic of hot debate during dinner and long into the night.

A special thanks to everyone who attended. I understand from Sara Peerun, Visiongain Marketing Manager, that feedback from press and participants continues to pour in – all of it positive. This event will be a regular, as will MSG involvement/support in making it a success.

In the meantime, a special thanks to Carey Bunks, Senior VP, Business Development, Yell.com, for walking me through the company’s new local mobile search app and for committing to a podcast soon. Carey and his Yell team were the proud recipients of the award for best location based search award – and asked me to join in the celebration.

(You can check out Sara’s slideshow on Flickr here.)

In case you missed it, the MSA winners are:

Best entertainment or information service

• Gold – IMImobile
• Silver – Clickatell
• Bronze – Thumbplay

Search engine optimization award

• Gold – Guava
• Silver – Puretech Internet Pvt. Ltd
• Bronze – Red Clay Interactive

Best advertising or marketing service

• Gold – MCN
• Silver – Jumptap
• Bronze – Kooaba

Award for best technology innovation – software

• Gold – Kannuu
• Silver – io global
• Bronze – Alabot

Award for best multimodal search service

• Gold – Novauris
• Silver – call genie
• Bronze – V-Enable

Most innovative business model

• Gold – Mobily
• Silver – Askmoby
• Bronze – Admob

Best location based search award

• Gold – Yell
• Silver – Telmap
• Bronze – Oxynade

Award for best content discovery experience on device

• Gold – Gracenote
• Silver – Kiboo S A for Moblr
• Bronze – Veveo

Overall mobile search company of the year

· Taptu

Taptu was a real surprise – especially if you consider the mobile search heavy-weights it was up against. My takeaway: People have earned their place in the mobile search equation. (MSG has covered the company since the start, so I invite you to explore the archive and download the white paper advertised on the right-hand side of this site. )

Taptu winning gold also tells us that mobile search is going to be an exciting space for a long time to come. But Taptu is just part of the story. The emergence of a slew of super-cool vertical search companies such as alabot (a self-learning local mobile search), askmoby.com (a location weather service that has become a hit with surfers and beach enthusiasts), and Kooaba (a visual search provider with a path-breaking business model) all bode well for the mobile search space. Yes, these are exciting times.

Look for these and more companies to be profiled here and over at MSG partner site AltSearchEngines (ASE) over the next weeks/months. Charles Knight at ASE wasn’t kidding when he said introducing new mobile search engines would end up being a full-time job (!)

At the other end of the spectrum, search advertising is also evolving into a new game with new rules. Mobile Content Networks (MCN), a provider of mobile search management and search revenue solutions, took the top award for Best Advertising and Marketing Service at the MSA – a clear sign that MCN’s allwords PPC Content Promotion programs are gaining traction.

By way of background, allwords was launched by MCN in Japan in 2007 as an outgrowth of its mobile search applications on NTT DoCoMo’s iMode portal and with Yahoo Mobile Japan. In a nutshell, allwords lets mobile content providers purchase all keywords in popular vertical content categories – such as music, images, games and shopping – to bring mobile users directly to the content item- not a link or a page- that they can click on and purchase. Mobile content providers and their agencies directly manage advertising budgets and content category promotions, measure user response directly, and adapt directly to market requirements.

(MCN is another company that MSG has followed from the start, so check out the coverage and browse the archives. There’s plenty there.)

Disclaimer: MCN is an MSG supporter; Taptu has collaborated with MSG on a white paper.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search. 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.