Voice Technology in Mobile Search

BY Rachel Cagle
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Digital media minutes spent on smartphones has grown 99% since 2013, according to comScore's report, Looking Ahead to the Voice Era. Why should that shock anyone? Smartphones are an all-​in-​one gadget. Phone, computer, mirror, flashlight, we all carry our smartphones everywhere because they fulfill a variety of our needs every day, and that includes shopping.

comScore says that, in just the first quarter of this year, mCommerce made up 22% of total digital commerce. An important fact that mobile advertisers tend to overlook is that, instead of typing out their searches, consumers are asking their phones' virtual assistants to search for them.

Roughly 50% of smartphone owners use the device’s voice technology, with 34% of these consumers claiming to use it daily and 49% who use it weekly. 47% of consumers who use voice technology say that their usage will only increase in the future compared to only 2% who say that usage will decrease and 51% of consumers who say that their rate of using voice technology will remain the same.

How can mobile advertisers use this information to their advantage? You should advise these clients to utilize conversation-​friendly search terms. When consumers are asking their virtual assistants to search for something, they are going to do so in a more conversational way than if they were trying to type out a search term as quickly as possible. Instead of just using key words related to your client’s product or service, add more words to your client’s search list that are likely to fall into the rest of the sentence a consumer would ask when looking for a product or service like your client’s.

Near me,” is another very common voice technology search term that consumers use. Optimize your search usage by making sure your client’s business will pop up on a location search, as well as a product-​based one.


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