Last week, I talked about how my behav­iors vary across mul­ti­ple devices. But it’s not just me. It’s every­one. And those dif­fer­ences in behav­ior will con­tinue to diverge as those expe­ri­ences become more cus­tomized. The mobile use case will look sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent than the tablet use case. Desk­tops and smart enter­tain­ment devices will be com­pletely dif­fer­ent beasts. We’ll use them in dif­fer­ent ways, with dif­fer­ent intents, and in dif­fer­ent con­texts. We’d bet­ter make sure our mar­ket­ing mes­sages are dif­fer­ent too.

Let’s go back to Jacque­lyn Kro­nes research from Microsoft, which I talked about in the last col­umn. If we divide search activ­ity into three buck­ets: mis­sions, exca­va­tions and explo­rations, we can also see that three dif­fer­ent approaches to search ads should go along with those diver­gent intents.

Exca­va­tion search ses­sions, which still live pri­mar­ily on the desk­top, are all about infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing. Suc­cess ads for these types of searches should offer rich access to rel­e­vant con­tent. Learn to rec­og­nize the key­words in your cam­paigns that indi­cate exca­va­tion queries. They are typ­i­cally more gen­eral in nature, and are often aligned with events that require exten­sive research: major pur­chases, plan­ning vaca­tions, research­ing life alter­ing events like health con­cerns, mov­ing to a new com­mu­nity, start­ing col­lege or plan­ning a wed­ding. In our quest to squeeze con­ver­sions off a land­ing page, we often not only pare down con­tent, but also on page nav­i­ga­tion point­ing to more con­tent. For an exca­va­tion type search, this is exactly the wrong approach. Here, the John Caples approach to copy writ­ing might be just the ticket– long, infor­ma­tion rich con­tent that allows the user to “cre­ate knowledge.”

Mis­sions, espe­cially on mobile devices, are just that. You get in and you get out, hope­fully with some­thing use­ful – some­thing that lets you do some­thing else. Suc­cess­ful ads in this envi­ron­ment should do the same thing – they should take you one (or sev­eral) steps closer to a suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the mis­sion. Ad mes­sag­ing should offer the promise of suc­cess­ful mis­sion com­ple­tion, and the post-click des­ti­na­tion should deliver on that promise. Clean, has­sle free and exquis­itely sim­ple to use are the march­ing orders of mobile advertising.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing search use case is that on a tablet device. I’ve chat­ted with Yahoo’s rel­a­tively new VP of Search, Shashi Seth about this. He believes tablets might open the door for the visu­ally rich, inter­ac­tive ads that brand mar­keters love. And Kro­nes research seems to indi­cate that this might indeed be the case. Tablets are ideal for explo­ration searches – which tend to be mean­der­ing voy­ages through the online land­scape with less spe­cific agen­das. The delight of serendip­ity is one big com­po­nent in an expe­di­tion search. And it’s this that marks a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture for most search marketers.

Every search mar­keter learns the hard way that it’s incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to lure a search user away from the task they have in mind. When we do our key­word analy­sis, we’re usu­ally dis­ap­pointed to find that the list of highly rel­e­vant words is much smaller than we thought. So, we extend our cam­paign into key­words that, while not directly rel­e­vant, are at least adja­cent to the user’s antic­i­pated intent. If they’re look­ing for a jig­saw, we might try run­ning an ad for free children’s fur­ni­ture plans. Or, if they’re look­ing for a new car, we might try run­ning an ad that reminds them that they can save 15% on their car insur­ance just by click­ing on our ad.

We’ve all been here. In the mind of the mar­keter, it makes sense to buy these key­words. After all, the two worlds are not so far apart. A new owner of a jig saw might indeed be inter­ested in build­ing a set of bunk beds. And the new car owner will need car insur­ance. The prob­lem is, nei­ther of those things are rel­e­vant “in the moment,” and “in the moment” rules in most search inter­ac­tions. It’s incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get a search user to switch from the task that they’re focused on. So, after a few months of try­ing, we reluc­tantly remove these key­words from our cam­paign, or drop the bid price so low they’re buried 3 pages of results deep.

But per­haps tablet users are dif­fer­ent. I’m cer­tain the search expe­ri­ence on a tablet will soon look sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent than it does on a PC. I would expect it to be more tac­tile and inter­ac­tive – less rigidly ordered. And, in that envi­ron­ment, given the looser con­straints of an expe­di­tion type search, we might be more will­ing to explore a visu­ally rich dis­trac­tion. Shashi Seth thinks so. Kro­nes’ research seems to also point in this direc­tion. For this search mar­keter, that’s rea­son enough to test the hypoth­e­sis. Or, I will test it, as soon as Google, Yahoo and Bing make that possible.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished in Mediapost’s Search Insider June 9, 2011

Biography / Resume : Gord Hotchkiss is the founder and senior vice president of Enquiro, now part of Mediative. He is renowned in the industry for his expertise when it comes to understanding online user and search behaviour. He and the Enquiro team have built a solid reputation for being the leading experts when it comes to understanding what happens on a search portal and why. Before Enquiro, Gord was chairman and director of SEMPO (The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), he worked as a columnist for MediaPost and Search Engine Land, and he was a regular speaker at industry conferences and events. Gord is also the author of The BuyerSphere Project: How Business Buys from Business in a digital marketplace.