The 450+ attendees at Think Mobile that descended on NYC in March can count themselves lucky. We were treated to an excellent line-up of 60+ top-notch speakers, chosen by my esteemed colleague Matthew Snyder, Founder & CEO of ADObjects, a strategic cross-media consultancy, for their insights, ideas, and willingness to share both. Feedback from my panel on Mobile Search & SEO has been overwhelmingly positive, in part because Matthew and I brainstormed and purposely brought together an eclectic mix of individuals passionate about their work and the mobile industry at large.

I was so impressed by the caliber of speakers (Michael Slinger, Manager, Google: Rachel Pasqua, Director, Mobile Strategy, iCrossing; and David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy at 360i) that I have decided to showcase each individually on MSG. (I had the opportunity to do a video interview with David and will be back with more on that, and his views on social media and mobile search, once the bnetTV team has edited the footage and posted in the video player in the sidebar.)

Today I kick off this “mini-series” with Bob Rosenschein, Answers Corporation CEO and mobile search “guru” (my description- he’s far too modest). The company’s social search service WikiAnswers.com has seen some stellar growth, according to comScore. In March, the measurement and market research firm reported that WikiAnswers.com U.S. unique visitors reached nearly 19 million in January 2009, compared to 729,000 in December 2006. During this time period, WikiAnswers.com’s market share increased from 4 percent to nearly 35 percent, vs. Yahoo! Answers, based on U.S. unique visitors. Overall, WikiAnswers.com was identified as the fastest growing top 200 U.S. domain for all of 2008.

Another milestone: Answers Corporation counted 10 million questions in the WikiAnswers.com Q&A database. (Answers Corporation acquired the WikiAnswers.com database in 2006, and since then questions have increased over 35-fold.) As Bruce D. Smith, Chief Strategic Officer of Answers Corporation, who leads the Community Development team, put it in a recent release: The WikiAnswers community is “experiencing exciting growth,” with over 500 volunteer supervisors and millions of contributors, supported by our 12-member Community Development Team.

Social search meets mobile? Regular readers will know I am excited about this combination. (In fact, I commented on this emerging business model in recent-release white papers from mobile search companies Taptu and abphone.) In view of WikiAnswers.com’s increasing popularity, I decided to take a closer look at the company’s future roadmap. I caught up with Bob to get the inside track on his company’s mobile ambitions, discuss the key criteria for an optimal mobile search experience, and the role of mobile advertising in the scheme of things.

Listen to the podcast. [16:18]

By way of background, Answers Corporation, founded in 1998, was formerly known as GuruNet. It changed its name to Answers Corporation in 2005. The company is best known as the owner of the popular social knowledge Q&A site WikiAnswers.com, and the “encyclodictionalmanacapedia” Answers.com. Answers is a Google AdSense partner, meaning thatAnswers.com and WikiAnswers.com show Google performance ads on their pages.

WIKIANSWERS.COM: It’s a fast-mover. “On WikiAnswers, people type in the questions; other people answer them; and hopefully, over time, we get the best possible answers. Our goal is to give the best answers anywhere on the Web, for any kind of question.”

MOBILE SEARCH: Bob can’t give specifics and I respect that. But he can give us an indication of what is in the pipeline. As he put it: “I will say that the area of delivering our answers on mobile is obviously of enormous interest to us this year and next year.” While companies can tailor their services to specific platforms and devices, Bob doesn’t recommend it and hints that his company is focused on “adapting our product lines over time to work on all of the mobile devices, and of course we mean smartphones, but not only smartphones — anything with a Web browser.”

OPTIMAL USER EXPERIENCE: Quick answers in fewer clicks is the algorithm for mobile search success. “We believe that there’s too much information overload.” The problem is that search engines are really good at searching the Web, but what do they deliver? “A page of links; of links to other sites, but you know what? The mobile world still has slow browsers….If you get a list of links to pages that are mobile pages, you’re almost afraid to click on one of them. How do you know if it’s going to be a 5 second page or a 25 second page?” You don’t know. “Our goal is to give people useful information in fewer clicks. And so that’s actually a very good hint towards how we see the mobile world evolving and what we think we might be able to add to it.”

MOBILE SEO: Is the end-game about delivering answers on the go? If so, then what is the potential impact on SEO? In a word: Profound. Bob points out that Google’s introduction of a canonical element aimed at assisting SEO clearly recognizes mobile content is different from the Web. “In other words, you can now make a page that exists in different forms, give it a canonical name, and tell Google that this is the canonical page. This is the real page, and all these other things are just adaptations of it for different user experiences and phone factors, especially mobile. So, Google is being advised that this is the same page as another page in a legitimate fashion such that it doesn’t hurt SEO.

PUBLISHER TIPS: Brand is everything, which is why companies must deliver a quality user experience that begins with the basics, such as presentation. “Users will have even less patience on a small device. You have to get it right and it’s a really different ballgame in terms of presentational dynamics.” Google and Yahoo will continue to be important, and I think the challenges for the rest of us [will be] to find our place in this new world…. [It] will boil down to user experience. In the words of Tim O’Reilly; ‘How do we get users to visit our content in an age where they are free to choose content?’

MONETIZATION & MOBILE ADS: Google changed the rules when it introduced text ads on their pages that didn’t look like text ads. “Google zagged when everybody else was zigging, and they did something very brilliant.” But the real lesson we must apply to mobile is relevancy.  ”It is attractive to the user; it’s more trustworthy. But if that weren’t enough, it is informative and not interruptive.” But even relevant ads might not convince users to accept mobile advertising, according to recent research from Nielsen Mobile (via Citi Investment Research, a division of Citigroup Global markets). Bob was kind enough to share a short excerpt and some surprising stats from the client report, written by analyst Mark Mahaney. Under the heading: “There is a material consumer resistance to mobile advertising,” Mahaney states privacy concerns and users’ skepticism are holding back mobile advertising in the U.S.

Meanwhile, we learn from the Thanh Nien Daily that mobile advertising is booming in Vietnam. Quoting Aaron Cross, managing director of The Nielsen Company in Vietnam, who spoke at a two-day conference on Integrated Marketing in Vietnam which wrapped up last Friday in Ho Chi Minh City, the post reports (according to the Nielsen Mobile Insights Survey 2008) almost half of mobile owners in Vietnam receive advertisements via SMS each month.

The majority of those ads are read by consumers. The survey also said 74 percent of people in HCMC and Hanoi, the country’s two economic hubs, own a mobile phone. Over half (58 percent) of the country’s urban population, and a third (37 percent) of rural residents own cell phones. But the way isn’t clear for mass marketing yet. Cross pointed out the new anti-spam government decree, which took effect last month in Vietnam, protects consumers from receiving unwanted messages on their mobile phones. However, cost-conscious Vietnamese consumers are open to “hot deals and great value to relieve pressure from their monthly budgets.”

Mobile advertising is also gaining traction in Japan. This post, quoting Tom Bowman, BBC.com’s VP international ad sales who spoke at the Digital Symposium hosted by Habari Media last week in the Western Cape, argues consumers are “almost twice as receptive to mobile advertising as to magazine advertising, making it the highest priority for prospective advertisers.”

WHAT’S NEXT?: The industry has to sort out business models. Is it sponsorship? Is it an animated display ad? Or is it some kind of click-through only on performance ads? “But I’m going to say something very flippant now: “Who cares? …It’s a branding opportunity… and sometimes you subsidize one part of your business with another.” Bob would rather “get the service right and figure out how to monetize later.”

Special thanks to Alison Minaglia at Technology PR for the image of Bob addressing the ThinkMobile audience!

The valuable primer walks us through the opportunities and challenges for mobile operators, marketers and portals/publishers. The document takes a balanced view, reminding mobile operators that they are “ideally positioned to provide their customers with search tools” and outlining the options they can chose from to offer mobile search services. However, I miss a discussion of the pivotal importance of brand (for mobile operators) and reasons why mobile operators should employ all mobile search tools/services at their disposal – as long as they brand the most valuable piece of real estate: The mobile search results page. (I believe this control is a critical component of an effective mobile search strategy, a topic I address in my analysis of what’s really at stake in the Verizon-Google deal in another post later today.)

The section of the white paper on mobile search business cases is particularly valuable. A case study from JumpTap, for example, tells us how intelligent search increased ROI for Sega Mobile. In the first month of the campaign (no details on where/when etc…), Sega reported a 9 percent CTR, and 7 percent of these clicks resulted in a sale. The bottom line: Sega tallied up its sales and divided that by the total amount spent on buying keywords to calculate a 320 percent ROI. After re-running the campaign with new keywords, Sega saw a 530 percent ROI in the second month and 11 percent of clicks resulted in a sale. Not so much stellar figures – but a confirmation that success in mobile  should be measured in quality and quantity.

The case study from Medio Systems stresses the importance of keyword advertising, and illustrates how the right choices can generate high-quality leads and high conversion.

By way of background, 4INFO, a mobile search and advertising company that operates a mobile alert service delivering up-to-date information on sports, news, movies, etc… purchased advertising on Medio’s MobileNow search network targeting keywords and keyword categories. The outcome: “Initial results were extremely good; a 29 percent CTR and a 5 percent conversion rate. Simple but direct creatives such as NBA Score Alerts and NHL Live Updates compelled 29 percent of users to click on the ad, with 5 percent of these converting to subscribers.” 4INFO continues to advertise with Medio MobileNow.

My take: A helpful document for beginners – but not a roadmap. A bit thin on methodology. Nonetheless, it is a welcome primer and precisely what we need to get everyone on the same page and move this industry forward. You can download the white paper here.

Disclaimer: JumpTap is an MSG supporter.