Most people agree that the most useful and pleasant mobile experiences occur in apps, not on mobile-appropriate web pages. Apps have been the key to iPhone’s ascendance on domination in smart phones, and they have also propelled Android ahead of venerable competitors like Blackberry and Nokia’s Symbian. More apps means more market share, broadly speaking. Few or no apps = death in today’s smart phone environment.
But Mobile Search was singularly focused on finding the best content on web pages. At least it was until now.
Do@ (say Doh-At) is an Israel- and San Francisco-based start-up focused on transforming mobile search by querying and providing results from apps rather than the web. When you search for a term in Do@, what you get in response is a sort of visual menu of app screen shots housing content appropriate to your request.
So what does that mean?
If you want information or the trailer on Hangover 2, an ordinary mobile search result might refer you to the web site, which may or may not have a mobile version. With Do@, you get screen shots of the IMDB , Flixster, and other theatrically oriented apps. Tapping a particular result takes you to a version of the app delivered in HTML 5, essentially a web page but with the appearance and functionality of an app. This “page” simulates the functionality of the fully functioning app, and enables you to experience all of its benefits.
Here’s the vid:
Because app viewing experiences are designed for the small screen, there is a high degree of likelihood that your overall experience as well as info access will be better through an app. Additionally, because the user does not actually have to download the app before they review the content, Do@ actually offers a powerful trial mechanism for app developers anxious to get more users, and for users to try before they buy
Because so much mobile search has a local component, Do@ takes your location into consideration when you make your query. So, for instance, if you are looking for a restaurant recommendation nearby, the app will connect you to location-focused results in the Yelp app and the like.
I think this is a big deal for digital and for brands. For digital, it is, perhaps, a really positive harbinger of a broader revolution in mobile user experience. I believe the figures are that mobile web access will surpass PC web access in about 2013 in the US – it already has in several Asian countries. But in order for Mobile Internet to deliver on its promise, basic connected utilities need to evolve experienctially to be OPTIMIZED for the handset. Since Search is arguably the most ubiquitous such utility, Do@ is an important step in the mobile transformation of the web.
From a marketing standpoint, the app-centric nature of Do@ may be a reason for many marketers to rethink their mobile advertising and marketing strategies, opting for a greater presence in the world of apps. While it is too soon to tell how much app usage will come from Do@ or its future imitators, it is plain that we’ll need to take a serious look at those figures as they materialize.
Do@ has made its debut as an iPhone app, and is available for free in the App Store.
Showing posts with label Media6Degrees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media6Degrees. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2011
Start-Up Watch COD: Media6Degrees Drives Strong Results By Applying an “Act-Alike” Social Science Principle to Targeting
I gravitate to companies that take a different approach or direction in digital media.
Because there are now so many companies doing more or less the same things with the same data points and the same units, many of us are skeptical about competing claims in the same industry categories. Raise your hand if you find the claims of reach, quality, and transparency a little tiresome when spouted by ad networks. Nuff said.
So I like different, and because of that I have liked Media6Degrees from the first time I heard about them. Media6Degrees was founded upon the social science principle that people with similar interests tend to cluster into groups that share brand affinities and purchase patterns. They use a four stage process to deliver results.
1.Identify: The company begins an engagement with a client by cookie-ing visitors to client web sites, taking one or two weeks to collect enough data points to build a seed population for a campaign.
2.Match: They identify the clustering behavior of your site visitors on the web, and match potential prospects (usually in the tens of millions of people) to deliver scale.
3.Execute: They deliver media to those matches through exchange based buying:.
4.Refine: They adjust the model based upon new learnings and refinement
So imagine you visit a brand web site and then go on your merry way, doing the things you like to do online. Like visiting blogs about quarter horses, sending e-greetings, checking the A’s scores, lurking in eBay auctions for beanie babies, taking a ten-minute break looking at paparazzi photos of celeb cellulite, flipping over to Facebook to leave a status update about how busy and overworked you are, and so on.
Your set of activities is compared to those of tens of millions of others. Individuals that demonstrate similar web consumption patterns are identified as having a high degree of likelihood of having similar interests. People who behave like you start seeing banners and videos for the product. And over time, the set of people seeing the banners and videos is refined to drive better metrics and scale.
Media6Degrees isn’t collecting user interest data, or leveraging 3rd party interest data. They actually DON’T CARE that you like cellulite photos and quarter horses. As with all reputable networks, individual identities are anonymized. But Media6Degrees offers two additional layers of anonymity – they don’t try to record your interests or bucket the types of content you visit.
You aren’t classified into some sort of “horses and corsets” psychographic to them. They don’t even focus on your demographics. What a person is – is someone with similar interests as certain other people, ergo more likely to have interest in the brands that those other people buy.
In this way Media6Degrees identifies the “Social Signature” of a brand. Then they purchase media against others who demonstrate similar interests, constantly tightening and refining the algorithm to improve the match.
That refining and winnowing is important because Media6Degrees optimizes to a desired metric, not just site visitation. They often find that while site visitors have one behavior pattern, actual buyers have somewhat different patterns.
A new offering called Planner can also provide brands and pubs information on the best sites to find brand users, and the best brands through which to monetize site users.
Anyway. By constantly tightening these Social Signature parameters they drive better and better results.
How much better? Well, I will only speak for the half dozen or so campaigns that I have knowledge of – ones that we fielded at Catalyst S+F. In every single case Media6Degrees was the number one or number two performer on the plans. By wide margins. We’ve seen results more than 3X better than any other plan element on several occasions.
And what I like best is that they drive those mega results by breaking the rules. While the rest of the world is getting more and more interest data from third parties, Media6Degrees says they don’t give a stuff about your interests, only a sense of how what you do on line is similar to what other individuals do. I am not condemning interest based targeting by saying this. Just pointing out that there may be more than one route to Zanzibar.
Me, I like having another path to take.
I like rule breakers. The crowd zigs. Media6Degrees zags. And based upon the results we have seen…zagging = good.
Because there are now so many companies doing more or less the same things with the same data points and the same units, many of us are skeptical about competing claims in the same industry categories. Raise your hand if you find the claims of reach, quality, and transparency a little tiresome when spouted by ad networks. Nuff said.
So I like different, and because of that I have liked Media6Degrees from the first time I heard about them. Media6Degrees was founded upon the social science principle that people with similar interests tend to cluster into groups that share brand affinities and purchase patterns. They use a four stage process to deliver results.
1.Identify: The company begins an engagement with a client by cookie-ing visitors to client web sites, taking one or two weeks to collect enough data points to build a seed population for a campaign.
2.Match: They identify the clustering behavior of your site visitors on the web, and match potential prospects (usually in the tens of millions of people) to deliver scale.
3.Execute: They deliver media to those matches through exchange based buying:.
4.Refine: They adjust the model based upon new learnings and refinement
So imagine you visit a brand web site and then go on your merry way, doing the things you like to do online. Like visiting blogs about quarter horses, sending e-greetings, checking the A’s scores, lurking in eBay auctions for beanie babies, taking a ten-minute break looking at paparazzi photos of celeb cellulite, flipping over to Facebook to leave a status update about how busy and overworked you are, and so on.
Your set of activities is compared to those of tens of millions of others. Individuals that demonstrate similar web consumption patterns are identified as having a high degree of likelihood of having similar interests. People who behave like you start seeing banners and videos for the product. And over time, the set of people seeing the banners and videos is refined to drive better metrics and scale.
Media6Degrees isn’t collecting user interest data, or leveraging 3rd party interest data. They actually DON’T CARE that you like cellulite photos and quarter horses. As with all reputable networks, individual identities are anonymized. But Media6Degrees offers two additional layers of anonymity – they don’t try to record your interests or bucket the types of content you visit.
You aren’t classified into some sort of “horses and corsets” psychographic to them. They don’t even focus on your demographics. What a person is – is someone with similar interests as certain other people, ergo more likely to have interest in the brands that those other people buy.
In this way Media6Degrees identifies the “Social Signature” of a brand. Then they purchase media against others who demonstrate similar interests, constantly tightening and refining the algorithm to improve the match.
That refining and winnowing is important because Media6Degrees optimizes to a desired metric, not just site visitation. They often find that while site visitors have one behavior pattern, actual buyers have somewhat different patterns.
A new offering called Planner can also provide brands and pubs information on the best sites to find brand users, and the best brands through which to monetize site users.
Anyway. By constantly tightening these Social Signature parameters they drive better and better results.
How much better? Well, I will only speak for the half dozen or so campaigns that I have knowledge of – ones that we fielded at Catalyst S+F. In every single case Media6Degrees was the number one or number two performer on the plans. By wide margins. We’ve seen results more than 3X better than any other plan element on several occasions.
And what I like best is that they drive those mega results by breaking the rules. While the rest of the world is getting more and more interest data from third parties, Media6Degrees says they don’t give a stuff about your interests, only a sense of how what you do on line is similar to what other individuals do. I am not condemning interest based targeting by saying this. Just pointing out that there may be more than one route to Zanzibar.
Me, I like having another path to take.
I like rule breakers. The crowd zigs. Media6Degrees zags. And based upon the results we have seen…zagging = good.
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