Om Malik writes about the buzz surrounding vertical Search on Sandhill Road. On explaining vertical, he says …
So what is vertical search? It is a specialized search engine that mines data for one narrow niche of the market place. Say jobs or travel. Or even high end real estate.
Because the data sources are so fragmented, there seems to be an opportunity to massage the data and present it in a manner that is simple to use and easy to consume. Sort of meta search for niches.
The main reason this is supposed to work is that the two older advertising models – cost per thousand (aka banner ads) and cost per click are too inefficient and fraught with fraud-related risk. Vertical search can offer a more focused audience, and thus increase the efficiency of ads on the search engine.
It also presents a new kind of advertising opportunity – lets call it cost per action. If you can generate leads, or say have some sign-up for an email newsletter or a RSS feed, you suddenly have created much higher value, and thus that click is more valuable.
Om’s commentary on how VC’s are getting all giggly over vertical ties in with a recent Jupiter Media Report predicting the rise of vertical search and although there has been some contention over the details, it does look like we’ll be seeing more money poured into vertical search startups soon…
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