Are decision engines the Emperor's new clothes?

It's been a big month for 'decision engines'.

First we had the build-up and launch of Wolfram-Alpha as mentioned a few weeks ago and now we have the launch of Microsoft's own decision engine called 'Bing'. Bing went live last week, a couple of days early. The earlier-than-planned-launch is a strong indication of the effort Microsoft has put behind it. Let's not forget how important Bing is to Microsoft. The majority of Microsoft's recent challenges to Google's search and online advertising dominance have failed to make an impact on their market share. Bing is the successor to Microsoft's Live Search. But what's different? And what exactly are 'decision engines', a term so new that there isn't a Wikipedia entry to define them yet?

Decision Engines are being positioned as the evolution of search. Whereas search engines 'simply' (and I use the word advisedly) return the closest match to a given search term, decision engines move us closer towards the 'semantic web' and artificial intelligence by using contextual information, together with the results of previous user's searches, to provide more accurate and more helpful results. Well that's the theory anyway.

But do either Wolfram Alpha or Bing live up to this?

Wolfram Alpha has hit the 100 million query mark, but getting an answer to your question is still quite hit and miss. It's actually quite difficult to think of a useful query that Wolfram Alpha has an answer for. Many questions still get a "Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input".

Bing on the other hand might well be trying to position itself as a 'decision engine' but it's not as revolutionary as its pre-launch billing. It's more of an evolution of search, attempting to improve on Google's offering.

And there are some nice features: the image search allows you to filter images by size, style, layout etc. A neat feature. The video shortcuts allows you to play the video by just rolling over the image thumbnail in the search. But Bing has been criticised for delivering poorer results than Google. For a neat way of comparing Google and Bing, Blackdog have created a split screen site to search both sites at the same time.

Will it be enough to make inroads into Google's market share? Only time will tell. But from first impressions it's just not significantly different or better than Google to shift consumer behaviour.

There is a danger that the term Decision Engine is being used by Microsoft in order to create some new news: as an attempt to be viewed as creating something new rather than just going head-to-head with Google. But that's exactly what Microsoft is doing.

The Wolfram Alpha product may not be quite there yet, but it takes us much more into the area of decision engines and its evolution will be much more interesting and important to watch.

B2B marketers need to embrace online search

Search is a key area in which B2B marketers are falling behind their B2C counterparts. Despite the huge growth in online advertising, business is not harnessing the internet to build brand awareness or drive product education. In fact, according to the IAB only 39% of businesses are using display advertising and less than 39% make use of online classifieds.

And these figures deteriorate further when we look at less frequently used online advertising media. If we take affiliate marketing, 67% of affiliates promote B2C merchants, 29% promote both B2C and B2B but only 4% promote B2B advertisers only (source E-consultancy, January 2007).

Why is this?

There are a number of factors. Firstly it’s a direct reflection of the lack of significant B2B-only properties & audiences in the space. However, despite the enormous size of the market, vertical B2B websites are only just starting to spring up.

Secondly there is the feeling that media planners and buyers lack awareness of these properties when planning online strategies.













[Source: E consultancy / Convera, Nov 2007]


Of course, some business sectors have been well represented in the online advertising space for some time – Technology being the obvious example.

And it is, perhaps naturally, in this sector where companies are pioneering. Take Second Life for example. Within the B2C space many brands have used Second Life less as a means of targeting specific audiences and more as a way of generating PR.

However, IBM’s large presence in Second Life has evolved into a real sales channel. Last year it opened a “virtual business centre” in Second Life, staffed by IBM sales personnel from around the world.

Clients looking to purchase hardware, software or simply get support in solving a business problem can actually meet with IBM sales personnel within the virtual business centre. The IBM avatar can interact and work with the Client avatar right up to the point of signing contracts and the final sales transaction, which are handled via a link to the main IBM website or by telephone.

“We seek to engage with clients in the way they prefer to engage,” Lee Dierdorff, vice president of Web strategy and enablement for IBM, said. “This may be over the Web, this may be over the telephone, and now it may be over a 3-D virtual world.”

So there’s huge potential for businesses to upweight their use of online advertising and other digital awareness routes.