Vertical Leap: David Hills' Keynote

Dave Hills is the CEO of LookSmart, and prior to that he ran About.com and 24x7 RealMedia. He sees Vertical Search as the next logical step, everyone agrees about it - but there is no clear definition of what it actually is.

His thesis is that it does not matter per se as to whether you are big or small, and the community of users you are targetting - and the advertisers you will be working with. LookSmart is in transition, moving from a generic search position into the vertical space.

Definition: Vertical search is about "Providing essential (versus exhaustive) search content and related tools for people who have a passion, need or repetitive task". Bringing together the two types of search:

• Broad search – need-based without knowledge or opinion of where to find information, products or services; consumer needs to cast a wide net
• Vertical search - still need-based, but the consumer has knowledge and needs greater concentration in one form of results

Vertical search is not new, and has been around for a number of years starting with travel and real estate. The explosion of services recently is due to the ever growing amount of advertising dollars shifting to search marketing, and the lower cost of development for new entrants. The space will be segment by content or by audience, and will leverage partially on technology and partially on  human editors. These vertical search sites will also provide a valuable service for one aspect of life.

Audience will embrace these new offerings because they save time, focus on essential results and allow you to leverage communities of like-minded people (especially when some social networking features are involved).
Advertisers and agencies will embrace these verticals because of the higher precision of the results, and the resulting higher degree of targeting (by page, keyword or behavioral). As with TV, advertisers, agencies will become adept at buying deeper, and over time share of dollars will equal share of viewing

This new market is still early in its infancy, but is ripe for a large development. First innovation generally comes from new entrants into a market, and it is expected from new players (like these attending or participating to the conference). More than enough advertising money will be available to go around, and venture capitalists are definitely looking at funding opportunities.

Summarizing the position of the three constituents in the market:

Consumers

• Will have both broad and vertical needs
• Can assimilate and utilize many brands into their lives
• Will want to save time and increase productivity
• Will want additional tools

Advertisers

• Want to have multiple choices in key media, like search
• Will support alternatives
• Will want increased opportunities to reach consumers
• Will adapt to buying deeper into the medium if it’s easy and productive

Participants/Innovators 

• Will create robust services and tools with laser focus
• Will be both big and small companies
• Will work in conjunction with, and separate from, other companies
• Will find smart people and money to drive and fund the business

Tag: verticalleap

Check out the coverage of the conference there.