The second screen: Mobile behaviour set to disrupt search marketing

As I checked out from a popular online fitness store with mixed feelings of satisfaction and joy in having finally got my hands on a sought-after (and mostly out-of-stock) energy supplement, my absentminded intellect happened to notice that everything I had just done transpired on a 4.8-inch screen. To be more specific, I had just completed a quick pre-buy, repeat, research, and purchase transaction with my favourite Galaxy SIII.

This also triggered another thought: that not a day passes without me finding myself glued to Flipboard (one of the best android applications ever created, IMHO), diving into articles, videos and pictures—all the while engaged in generous tweeting, sharing and even ‘gmailing’ myself the content I would like to save for later reading.

What am I raving about here ... really?

A few months ago, the smallest device I would have considered using in relatively high-involvement activities such as the ones above would probably have been a tablet of some sort. And the realisation of a possible shift happening in my own behaviour patterns toward a smaller screen got a trail of introspection going. Somewhere along the trail, the bright light of realisation dawned: this potential, albeit dormant, lies within all of us and will manifest itself in full glory at the right time—consciously or subconsciously.

The potential that I am raving about can be aptly titled the 'Rise of the second screen'. And this ascent of the smartphone screen to new dimensions of importance holds the potential to disrupt the largest business on the Web: search.

Peer at data from various corners of the world and it is clear that desktop and laptop search volumes are declining steadily as consumers are clocking blistering growth rates on search across mobile devices. Pegged at about 3 billion by the end of 2012 and accounting for more than half of the world’s total mobile population, it comes as little surprise that the stratospheric rise of mobile device adoption across Asia is powering the changing shades of consumer behaviour.

And the picture would be far from complete if I failed to mention how mobile web overtook the PC web in China in Q4 2012—with more than 72 per cent of the total Internet user base accessing the web from mobile devices (largely smartphones). This equates to about 400 million users, according to recent estimates (China's mobile subscriber base is more than 1 billion). Breathtaking stats, indeed.

What are some of the changing consumer search behaviour patterns in this space? And what are the implications for search marketing?

Experiences are evolving; patterns are shifting

To capture even a significant part of the changing behaviour patterns is akin to pushing an elephant through the eye of a needle. So let me attempt to highlight a few threads in the overall fabric that have the potential to herald larger changes in the gargantuan search industry.

Search fragmentation is a phenomenon that is gathering momentum with the proliferation of countless apps. Gone are the days when search was funneled via browsers or search engines. One can easily access most of the pertinent information via excellent applications—Kindle, Nook, Wattpad, Spotify, Golden Village, Tripadvisor, Yelp, Accuweather, YouTube—the list is truly endless. The search industry is far from finding a unified method for targeting, tracking, measuring and monetising this space.

Location and context are increasingly beginning to affect search patterns, and the burgeoning mobile populace has ensured that search-research is done on-the-fly. Consumers are leveraging the power of broader pipes (4G/LTE) to research in-store, thus leading to even more complicated purchase patterns and behaviour.

To quote my earlier example, I hadn't the slightest inkling that I would engage in sudden research for energy supplements and that my research would culminate in a buy. Therefore the erstwhile forecasting models of behaviour are starting to look shaky, and the search industry needs even more robust technology to handle the virtual, omnipresent, unpredictable user behaviour. Google recently has tried to address location and context through a major overhaul of the Adwords Search platform, titled Enhanced campaigns, but in my opinion, it is far from being versatile or robust.

Personal search companions in Android smartphones are still in the ‘learning’ phase, in my opinion, but this is yet another truly powerful mobile feature that will have marked effects on behaviour. Titled Google NOW, this is based on a built-in UI that progressively builds a ‘knowledge graph’ of the owner. And with critical data mass, this turns out to be a powerful user experience that automatically provides a host of great personalised info. Displayed as a series of cards, the data pack a punch, offering time-bound automatic custom route info (point A to point B, based on road travel history), weather, places of interest near your location, bus terminals and timings near your current location, customised search suggestions and much more.

The feature renders an active ‘search’ redundant many times. At the pace at which Android is flooding the market, it is only a matter of time before critical data volumes facilitate the formation of new mobile search audience segmentation and targeting methods. Imagine a restaurant chain being able to segment and target customers by inbound location, day and time of week (say Saturday evenings), choice of cuisine (say lamb steak with rosemary and port) and trigger a special family offer via YouTube on Friday night?

Social sharing patterns will also undergo a marked change from a frequency, volume and content-breadth perspective. As smartphones get even smarter, as the smartphone experiences get even more seamless and as the access speeds get increasingly faster, so will the breadth of content and apps that deliver user content. The direct outcome will be even more powerful engagement and faster social connection / share rates. In my own experience, my Galaxy SIII is powering a fresh ‘volume absorption and broadcast sharing’ phenomenon in my life, wherein attractive pieces of content are discovered faster via content aggregation apps and share-broadcast faster to a bunch of social platforms such as Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The second screen is here to stay.

The cacophony over the rise of tablets and quasi-tablet devices shows no signs of abating. What is quite evident is that the swarm of latest Android ‘smarter-phones’, with the Galaxy SIII in the lead, are setting new behaviour patterns in motion across the mobile populace. The second screen is not only here to stay, but also poised to make the search industry take a hard look at both technologies and strategies on how to target, engage and create relationships with the new smartphone audiences.