Mobile Search: Is Off-Portal Where the Action Is?
With Peggy Salz
Mobile Search Expert
Mobile Search Panel Recap: Clicks Are Good But Commerce Is Better; Is Off-Portal Where the Action Is?
As I said in the post below, today’s tie-up between MCN and Nokia also provides me a perfect opportunity to summarize the highlights from the mobile search and advertising session (Overcoming The Barriers To Delivering A Successful Mobile Search Advertising Ecosystem) moderated by Oguz Oktay from ARGELA-USA Inc., which brought me together with MCN CEO Marc Bookman and Juhani Kivikangas, TeliaSonera VP Content, New Businesses, Business Area Mobility Services. The panel was part of Mobile Advertising 2008, organized by IIR Ltd. and our own James Cameron.
The discussion centered on the mobile advertising ecosystem and the role of branded search providers in the scheme of things. We started off with the operator perspective from Juhani, who walked us through his strategy and the company’s clever move to encourage mobile search and surfing by offering users improved navigation and streamlined access to Internet sites via a mobile search toolbar. The approach, which takes its inspiration from the PC browser experience, offers users a long list of features and functionality including bookmarks, zooming capability, browsing history and a dedicated search box.
By way of background TeliaSonera booted out Microsoft (MotionBridge) to relaunch its portal with white-label search and advertising provider JumpTap. JumpTap is the exclusive partner for all advertising and paid search ads served on the portal.
In Juhani’s view, mobile operators must create business ecosystems that allow them to deliver users results and content from the Internet as well as content from their own portals and partners.
Since the end-game in mobile search is about delighting the customer with a great search experience, mobile operators should choose their options wisely. “Branded search players are not only [operator] competitors; they can also be partners.” The trick is to negotiate these relationships from a position of strength and maintain control over the search results and the traffic.
The mobile search functionality offered by TeliaSonera’s SurfOpen service - provided and hosted by JumpTap - presents search results organized in a range of categories and gives the operator the final say.
The operator-branded search results page combines results from TeliaSonera mobile content partners (divided into individual content categories such as ringtones, video, etc..); results from the mobile Web index (provided through crawling); global Internet index results (provided through crawling and an third-party API to Ask.com); local results (from the Web and provided through a third-party API, where available); and white pages/yellow pages results (provided through integration with third-parties, where possible).
Read the entire post on Peggy’s blog MSearchGroove HERE.
