Search VS Content. Intent VS Interest

A couple of days ago I had an interesting conversation about the differences between intent and interest as it applies to targeting ads.
Google is a huge business because they run the biggest “intent engine” in the world. Millions of people are going to Google every day and effectively state their current intent.
If you search for “XBOX Price” Google assumes that you intend to buy an XBOX.
The question is - Is intent all you need in order to target ads for users in the most efficient way?

I argue that the answer is no. Search is a great indicator for intent, but often enough it is not a good indicator for interest.
If you look at Google Trends you can see that a lot more users are searching for the term “Music” than the term “Britney Spears” although Britney is one of the more popular search terms. Same results if we compare the term “Movies” to “Batman” or “The Dark Knight” which was the most popular movie of the year.
We see the same thing in fashion searches as well as gaming.

When people want to buy something, they search for the exact phrase. This is why Google is a great platform for direct marketers who want to “catch” users just before they decide to buy something. But if you want to target users by their long term interests, search is not the best and definitely not the only place you need to put your money.
For example, take people who search for music. They get to iTunes, Rhapsody or any of the other music services and that’s it. Now for the next year, they will get all their music needs there. If you want to target ads for the some of your artists, how do you know which users tend to like each music genre?
Even if you use the user search data you may draw the wrong conclusions. Maybe I searched for Madonna just in order to buy a present to a friend. But if you will know which music I listened to for the past year, you can really conclude what types of music and artist I like and which ones I might like in the future.

This is the still untapped promise of behavioral targeting - the ability to go from intent to interest. It is especially suited for brand advertisers. Unlike direct marketers, brand advertisers want to reach a certain profile of users. The purpose of these campaigns is to build a long term relationship with the user and not a one night stand.
For example, they want to reach the users who are really engage into business and not the ones who looked for stocks right now because it is the main item in the news. They want to reach the real fashion enthusiasts and not the ones who searched for a dress because it’s prom night. They want to know your interests and not just what you want to buy or do today.

Now, to be fair, search could also give you indicators about interest. If every day for a few months I will search for keywords involving financial terms, we can assume that it is part of my interests. But the question is, how many people use search like that? Don’t most people search for something a couple of times, find the sites they need, bookmark them and than start to go there directly?

This is why in the long run, all these social networks, blogging and video sites might have a very bright future. While Google is sitting on today gold mine of intent data, they might be holding to the gold mine of tomorrow - the user interests data.