Affiliate Marketing in the Post-Siri World
Much hand-wringing is being done over Google’s switch to encrypted search as-a-default in the newest Panda update.
Clearly, this should be a major concern for publishers. Google is drawing some clear lines in the sand and making distinctions within its previously assumed playing field that haven’t been made before, causing a major shakeup in both the SEO and paid search camps. The only clear winners are Adwords advertisers (and Google).
However, Google and affiliates have another rider approaching on the horizon that threaten to shake things up even more in the coming months and years ahead… Siri.
Simply put, the bombshell that Apple (Steve Jobs) has dropped on the tech, consumer device AND advertising markets is astounding.
On its face, Siri is a fun and engaging personal assistant. I know because I can’t stop using it to set calendar appointments, make reminders, research useless facts about Thundercats and text my friends. This is not your Android’s speech recognition… something new is going on here.
How does this impact Google and affiliate marketing?
To answer that, you should do yourself a favor and go buy (or find a friend who has an) iPhone 4s. Hold down the home button. Let the magic work.
Soon, you’ll be transported to an existence where you’re actually talking to your phone and things are happening. Not only that, but you start feeling more comfortable with using your phone as your search engine rather than having to go through the more laborious (by 2 seconds but still) step of using your laptop (gasp!) to browse to google.com and search for a random fact or piece of trivia.
Rather, you’re using Siri to point you to the nearest pizza restaurant or remind you that you need nails the next time you’re near a Lowe’s or find a sweater on the web for you.
This is not meaningless and this is very important… the ground is shifting underneath Google (and Amazon’s) feet as Apple is single-utility-ian co-opting the verb and gesture of search into something much more comfortable and real and actionable on their own device.
In essence, Siri takes search and discovery back from the hands of an algorithmic and impersonal box and places it in our hands and gives it voice. That is going to be a major revolution as Apple extends Siri to its iPad and probably its line of Macs.
This has major ramifications for affiliate marketers as suddenly they are faced with the diminishing returns (the revolution will be voice) from Google and inputs like Siri become more mainstream.
So what can affiliates do to prepare for the coming voice-pocalypse? I’d suggest looking to Siri to glean pointers. Google started a major revolution in the affiliate world by opening the doors to not just search on its own site, but search within a site. However, Siri opens the doors to a new dimension of this search/discovery paradigm by pointing users (and affiliates) to the need to incorporate more “human” and “natural language” forms of discovery.
Affiliates who can jump in front of the curve by incorporating intelligent conversation and transactions with users and discoverers will be the ones who prosper in the 20-teens just as affiliates who wised up to the powers of SEO, PPC and search did well in the 20-00′s.
Here’s to the spoken future.