Zodiac Interactive debuts mobile content search engine

By Giselle Abramovich

January 29, 2008

The Zodigo search engine automatically learns users’ preferences

Zodiac Interactive, a software developer for interactive television, introduced Zodigo, a mobile content search engine much like a movies-on-demand service from cable operators.

Zodigo is navigated with a remote control or keyboard and mouse, and includes features for even inexperienced mobile consumers to discover and download mobile content, the company claims.

“There is an explosion of mobile users and a growing need for different types of mobile applications and content,” said Matt Johnston, CEO of the new Zodigo operating company.  

“Digital TV operators, like virtually all digital media companies, are trying to build a mobile phone relationship with their customers, and so far they have not had the technology in place to capitalize on the growing mobile community,” he said. “They are also trying to grow new revenue opportunities, and mobile is obviously a high-growth market.”

The Zodigo search engine automatically learns about users’ preferences as well as their exact mobile phone type and recommends only content that works for that phone.

Zodigo lets consumers discover content such as games, applications and ringtones

Zodigo lets consumers channel surf and discover content such as games, applications, ringtones, movies, podcasts, coupons, mobile Manga [Japanese comics], tickets, alerts and full songs for the mobile devuice. 

“Zodigo is integrated with mobile carriers, content providers and digital TV operators to provide a seamless shopping experience,” Mr. Johnston said. “We cover 97 percent of the market for North American mobile operators.

“For this collection of heterogeneous content, current search metaphors don’t work very well,” he said. “For example, text-based search only works if you know what you are looking for and the content you are searching has good, text-based meta-data. The TV Guide metaphor only works with scheduled content.”

Mr. Johnston also said that content directories have only been available either on the mobile phone through existing mobile operators, through cluttered teen-targeted Web sites, or directly from individual, fragmented content publishers. Therefore, the shopping experience has been poor.

Different ad models
There are three types of advertising opportunities on Zodigo. 

“First, Zodigo includes a carrier-class click-to-call solution called TVcallMe that makes it easy to connect mobile users directly to local businesses with a click of the remote,” Mr. Johnston said.

“ For example, we will be demonstrating a feature at [today’s] Demo conference that allows a mobile user to find a coupon for Domino’s Pizza, have the coupon sent to the mobile phone, and have the mobile phone ring and the call gets connected to the closest Domino’s location.” 

This feature is not exclusive to Domino’s but is a local search component of the application. 

Second, Zodigo will have simple display advertising inventory on the TV application, in a similar way to Zodiac’s current “Games On Demand” service that has short video ads and full screen “barndoor” ads that promote content.

“Zodigo allows users to playfully discover new content, in the model of the Web toolbar StumbleUpon,” Mr. Johnston said.  “Thus, Zodigo includes a yield optimization algorithm to maximize the purchase rate of user recommendations. 

“Zodigo will also prioritize content in a pay-per-transaction revenue-sharing model with content providers,” he said. “In other words, content providers can pay for placement by bidding a higher per-transaction revenue share to Zodigo."