Mobile Search - Market Description

Market Description

"Competition for the US mobile search market promises to be fierce, thanks to the large US online ad market and strong pushes by portals. By 2011, mobile search will account for around $715 million, or almost 15% of a total mobile advertising market worth nearly $4.7 billion", according to a leading market research firm; eMarketer. Depending on a researcher's particular bias toward telecom, Web or technology factors, the published forecasts for global mobile search vary from $1.5 billion by 2011 (from Informa Telecoms & Media) to over $11 billion by 2008 (according to Piper Jaffray).

Mobile search is important for the usability of mobile content for the same reasons as internet search engines became important to the usability of internet content. Early internet content was largely provided by portals such as Netscape. As the depth of available content grew, portals were unable to provide total coverage. As a result Internet web search engines such as Google and AltaVista proved popular as a way of allowing users to find the increasingly specialist content they were looking for. In an international journal article, 'Exploring the logic of mobile search', Westlund, Gómez-Barroso, Compañó, and Feijóo(2011) outline a thorough review of research on mobile search usage, and also present an in-depth study of user patterns. They conclude that mobile search has started to change mobile media consumption patterns radically. They also emphasize that future developments of mobile search must be sensitive to the mobile logic.

There is a similar situation developing in the mobile content industry. Given early adopter usage of mobile services, there has been a vast increase in the depth of content developed for mobile phones. There are now few large organizations that do not offer a mobile service of some sort. Most of the operators run their own portals that showcase the best available content. However, given the limitations of a mobile phones screen size and general navigability, most of available content that has been written for mobile users is effectively invisible to users. Research from Qpass suggests that less than 36% of an operator's portal is within 30 seconds navigation distance for the user - this being the expected time users expect to find content in.

Beyond navigation is location-aware technology for mobile search. Mobile local search is 30% of all digital searches with a surge in growth expected world-wide in 2010. What is Mobile Local Search (MLS)? Are all searches local? What are the component technologies of a powerful MLS application? How can advertisers purchase inventory ad units available within the application structure? Mobile Local Search is the search and discovery of persons, places, and things within an identifiable space defined by distinct parameters. These parameters are evolving. Today they include social networks, individuals, cities, neighborhoods, landmarks, and actions that are relevant to the searcher’s past, current, and future location. These parameters provide structure to vertically deep and horizontally broad data categories that can stand-alone or are combined to comprise searchable directories.

Thus, MLS can occupy several application categories/directories simultaneously. This is a double-edge sword for product designers and developers, analytic engines, financial media analysts, and media planners and buyers needing to evaluate one category with another or one directory with another. The lack of clean comparative analysis based upon application occupancy of an individual category creates a challenge for marketers looking to maximize the value of applications to the supply chain including brand marketers looking to embed advertising within an application.