Matt Bush, Director of Performance Agency at Google, discusses changes in the way we search and the ever-increasing significance of mobile and video
We’re all used to using Google Street View to find our way to a meeting or locate that new bar, but in 2014 the service went off-road. Raffia the camel, carrying a lightweight camera, trekked across the Liwa Desert in Abu Dhabi. This was new territory for Google’s epic map-making project, and developments like this enable us to enjoy digital journeys – literally in this case – that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
“People’s digital experiences are becoming richer and richer,” Matt Bush, Director of Performance Agency at Google, told delegates at Figaro Digital’s Transformation Conference. “The question is how do you take the signals that we’re seeing in search and, in particular, in video, and make sense of them so that we can have better engagement with our customers?”
Before considering the future of search, however, it’s worth thinking for a moment about its past. Back in 2003 Wired journalist and internet-watcher John Batelle identified the ‘database of intentions.’ Batelle noted that search patterns reveal the real concerns not just of individuals, but whole countries and cultures. Search, as Bush explains, “Is where people are intimate, honest and truthful. People are totally being themselves.” In contrast with our carefully curated social media personas, it’s “by looking at search that we can tap into people’s deepest feelings. And by understanding that we should be able to give them more content that’s relevant.”
2014, of course, was the year mobile access to the internet finally overtook desktop. Another billion people are expected to come online over the next five years, and they’ll be doing so via mobile devices. Increased connectivity has a profound impact on our behaviour, not just in what we search for online, but in how we go about it.
In the last three years there’s been a threefold increase in searches beginning ‘How to…?’ as we go to Google for advice on everything from dressing to cooking, Bush told Figaro Digital delegates. There is, unsurprisingly, a strong element of local specificity in search patterns. The most popular ‘How to…?’ search in the US finds users trying to tie a tie. In the UK it’s how to make pancakes. It’s by looking more closely at search phrases that real-life stories and broader patterns begin to emerge.
We’re also becoming more conversational in our search. “A lot of this is driven by mobile and voice search,” says Bush. “People are getting more used to asking Google a question as they would a human.” According to a Google study in the US, 55 per cent of teens and 41 per cent of adults are now using voice search at least once a day.
“What’s unique about mobile – and mobile search in particular – are the contextual signals we can use to help provide a better experience for users. I believe – and not just because I work at Google – that mobile search is the most creative mobile ad format. Not because it’s pretty, but because it uses something unique about the mobile phone to add value. We know what time of day it is. We know where that customer is with geo-fencing. We know which apps they’re logged into and, if they allow it, we know what sites they’ve looked at. All of that is context which can provide a much better ad for exactly what they’re looking at, at that specific moment in time.”
Screen testing
Pivotal in the evolution of search is the huge impact of video. Multiple screening (the average UK user owns three devices) is something we’re all aware of. What may be surprising however, is that 86 per cent of parallel internet use is not specific to the programme being watched.
“Instead of commenting on the football or Downton Abbey,” says Bush, “there’s a huge number of people who are doing something else; the TV’s on in the corner but they’re not paying attention to it while they’re online. How do we make that experience better for them?”
In answering that, Bush points to a campaign Nike undertook during the 2014 World Cup. The brand created 3D images of star players like the Brazilian forward Neymar. The moment something happened in a game, the 3D players hit the Google Display Network (GDN) to grab the attention of the millions who were browsing online. Users could then create personalised widgets which they were encouraged to share.
“This was the most engaged-with ad campaign that Nike did over the course of the World Cup,” says Bush. “It was relatively simple in many respects, but it understands user behaviour and tries to take advantage of that.”
Video and the new influencers
After Google itself, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Here too, the combined force of mobile and video is significant. Forty five per cent of all YouTube views are via smartphones or tablets. And it’s the phone that’s leading the charge.
“By the end of 2015, if current run rates are continued, smartphone YouTube usage will be higher than desktop and tablet put together. People say nobody’s really watching long-form content on small screens. Let me tell you – they are.”
It isn’t just YouTube’s size and scope that continues to expand. So does its reach and influence. Bush points out that 64 per cent of users say YouTube content has influenced their purchase decisions, and that spending on mobile video has increased by 200 per cent in the last 12 months. He also points to the extraordinary influence wielded by a new generation of vloggers like Zoella, the Brighton-based 24-year-old whose opinions on fashion and make-up have won her eight million fanatical subscribers.
“These creators of digital content are who young people really look to,” says Bush. The question for brands is how they can align themselves with these new influencers. Word-of-mouth has always been marketing’s most valuable currency. Vlogging, though, supercharges its impact to reach a vast and receptive audience – immediately.
“Find out what users are asking for and be in that space,” advises Bush. “Understand context. Use it to be creative and impactful with your message. And market to people, not devices. The consumer doesn’t care what device they’re on, and neither should you.”
This article appears in Figaro Digital Issue 23. Matt Bush spoke at the Figaro Digital Marketing Transformation Conference, November 2014.
Feature by Jon Fortgang