Voice technology, speech recognition and deep learning have changed the face of search as we know it. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and Big Data technologies are sure to help leverage the penetration and adaptability of voice-based search. Sahil Chopra, founder and chief executive officer, iCubesWire, in a conversation with Deepshikha Shukla, shares how voice-based search can improve digital advertising and search engine optimisation.
Q. How does voice search technology work?
A. Voice search works on the natural language processing (NLP) process, which simply defines how a computer comprehends human language, and AI. This technology has transformed how humans interact with technology.
Voice technology is the next-generation disruptor in business intelligence, marketing and advertising. All smartphones these days are equipped with voice search such that you can use Google without using the keyboard, for instance.
Q. What are the benefits of voice search?
A. There is certainly consumer comfort with voice-generated search. A user gets instant gratification from using voice, which allows him or her to carry out searches on the Web or shop on platforms like Amazon, without having to type a single letter. Then of course, the experience is more conversational and interpersonal in the more conventional sense.
Voice search is definitely impacting the way advertising is seeing a transformational phase. Voice as search is enabling businesses to interact with its target groups, and it will play a crucial role in unifying branded content marketing made available by digital marketers across the globe.
Q. How can a voice search strategy improve digital advertising?
A. A voice search strategy will change the digital advertising landscape like never seen before. It is a watershed movement and voice search will only delve deeper into our searches in the coming years.
This is another crucial reason why companies invest heavily in such technology today, so that users do more than search and actually converse with these AI engines—the more users converse with them, the more they will churn out not just desired results but intelligent, witty and often deliberately humorous responses. The engines learn how to break through the semantics of voice and language, jargons, multiple meanings and contextual complexities.
For digital advertisers and marketers, NLP is used for text-to-speech, email, conversion, healthcare, e-learning, drawing qualitative insights from customer interactions, figuring out through AI the sentiment one may hold towards a product or business or experience, and so on.
Q. How does voice search impact search engine optimisation (SEO)?
A. Voice search platforms give users immense comfort, which, in turn, doubles voice search optimisation. To gain a grip among target users, SEO will play a crucial role in the digital future. As there are more prolific and organic searches made, platforms like Google are investing to focus more on voice search optimisation.
Such companies need to up the ante and invest in SEO to rank higher and to get a more targeted audience.
Q. What is the role of AI and ML in voice-based search?
A. If we try to chart out an effective strategy to target audience through advertising, it can be said that both AI and ML will prove to be beneficial. On one hand, ML systems have an advantage already due to the algorithms. It is expected to trend more with mobile in-app advertisers.
On the other hand, AI holds the promise that audiences can be approached with the right advertisement strategy with the help of advanced vision algorithms and performance data, and brands can take the plunge into determining the right brand strategy for the current trends and the scope of creativity that will perform well in future.
Q. What are the innovations around voice-based search?
A. Businesses will start refining the availability and usability aspect of content, which is being made accessible to users. Few innovations around voice search are IBM Shoebox, Apple Iris and HomePod, Microsoft Voice Search, Google Voice Search, Amazon Alexa and Echo, Samsung Bixby, Alibaba Genie X1 and Google Duplex.
Q. How are you planning to contribute to this technology?
A. ComScore says that more than fifty per cent of searches will be voice based by 2020. As a tech tuned organisation we are more inclined to integrate our advertising strategies towards innovating more tech and content solutions keeping in mind the vertical demand of this format of Internet consumerism.
