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<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Adchemy" title_caption="Murthy Nukala" class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/528fd5186da8112e57546a67-960/murthynukala%20(adchemy-060380).jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><keyword id="1949286" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Adchemy">Adchemy</keyword></p><p class="caption">Murthy Nukala</p></div><p></p></div>Adchemy, the Foster City, Calif., adtech startup, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/04/xl-marketing-buys-adchemy-actions/">sold its lead generation business to XL Marketing</a> earlier this month. So we thought it was a good time to check in with Murthy Nukala, the company's founder and CEO, to see where Adchemy is going now.</p>
<p>Business Insider named Adchemy one of our <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hottest-pre-ipo-adtech-startups-2013-9">hottest adtech startups</a> recently in part because the company has taken a huge amount of venture capital funding - $119 million over eight years. Its backers include Accenture and Microsoft. (For contrast, Rocket Fuel, which staged an IPO this year, had taken only $77 million before it went public.) Nukala is also a prominent brain in the adtech world: He attended both MIT and Harvard Business School.</p>
<p>The company has had a complicated history. Nukala told us it started with six different products but killed five of them over the years.</p>
<p>Lead generation - placing banner ads that direct consumers to fill in online forms if they're interested in certain products - had been one of Adchemy's core businesses. Five years ago, mortgage companies would pay $10 per lead, a source close to Adchemy told us. The University of Phoenix was another former Adchemy client.</p>
<p>Before that, Adchemy experimented with real-time web page optimization: trying to build an algorithm that would optimize ads on a page to get the highest yield in çlicks.</p>
<p>But now the company is changing direction again, this time with a view to reorganizing the way online retailers conduct their search engine marketing.</p>
<p>"We had a phase of the company where we just experimented a lot. We threw things against the wall and saw what stuck," Nukala says. "We had to drown some puppies to make sure the strongest one survived. At the end of it, you can't do more than one thing really, really well."</p>
<p>"It's less a notion of pivots and more about having multiple business units and then deciding to focus," Nukala says.</p>
<p>As the company was figuring out that focus, Nukala suffered a personal setback: Rajeev Motwani, a professor of computer science at Stanford University who was an advisor to the company, died in 2009.</p>
<p>The sale of the lead-generation business will allow Adchemy to focus on its latest direction - "semantic" or "entity" search, as Nukala calls it.</p>
<p>Until now, most shopping-related search marketing has revolved around optimizing web sites and ads for keywords typed in to Google by consumers. But Nukala believes that Adchemy's dashboard can divine a latent level of meaning <em>beneath</em> those search words that clever retailers can take advantage of.</p>
<p>For instance, if someone searches for "discount lightweight laptop," Google will match results - and serve ads - for those keywords. But those words don't meaningfully reflect what the consumer is searching for: "'Laptop" is important but it is third in the string. "Discount" means price. And "lightweight" is a quality. So retailers might want to only show ads for machines that are less than $300 in price and less than 4 pounds in weight, Nukala tells us.</p>
<p>Adchemy's new product is intended to structure a retailer's online catalog so that it responds with product listing ads in Google by extracting that meaning, rather than by simply matching keywords.</p>
<p>"The future of algorithmic search is to be entity driven," Nukala says. "Underpinning the back-end is an entity graph. You recognize what the user is talking about so you can interpret the question and return an answer. ... it's just better to manage entities than keywords."</p>
<p>Whether Adchemy can actually achieve this is an open question, of course. Building "semantic" or "latent" search algorithms is unbelievably complicated. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-and-facebook-are-at-war-for-domination-of-latent-search-a-business-thats-about-to-be-huge-2013-10">Facebook and Google are both trying it</a>. They're two of the only companies big enough for the task: The former is starting with a database of more than 1 trillion posts.</p>
<p>Nukala says this time Adchemy is going to stick to the task rather than pivot again. "One of the nice things is that selling the Adchemy Actions [lead generation] business - all that went back into the company. None of it went to cash out any investors." Nukala declined to say how much cash the sale made.</p>
<p>The company has about 30 clients using the new search product, Nukala says, naming Macy's and Modcloth as two of them. When asked about their search budgets, Nukala initially said that a "typical" monthly search budget would be about $200,000. That would imply annual billings of around $72 million ($200K x 30 clients x 12 months), of which Adchemy would retain only a portion in fees or commissions.</p>
<p>But when pressed on the issue, Nukala said $200,000 would be more of a "minimum" spend per client. "We have several customers who spend several million dollars a month," he says. He declined further comment on his clients' budgets.</p>
<p>He also declined to say how much revenue Adchemy is currently generating, but admitted the company is not yet in the black. "We are not profitable but we're not far off."</p>
<p>Adchemy is on track to double its revenue next year and increase it employee headcount (currently about 100 people) by 50%, Nukala says. "Our plan is to be self supporting."</p>

After 6 Different Business Models And $120 Million In Funding, This Adtech Startup Thinks It's Figured Out The Next Wave Of Search

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Adchemy" title_caption="Murthy Nukala" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5386245769bedddb2d4e37e6-960/murthy-nukala-adchemy-1-2.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Adchemy</span></p><p class="caption">Murthy Nukala</p></div><p></p></div></div>We recently told you about the anger among former employees of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/adchemy-stock-payouts-in-walmartlabs-acquisition-2014-5">Adchemy, a California adtech startup recently acquired by @WalmartLabs</a>, the digital marketing unit of Walmart.</p>
<p>The former staff are mad because Walmart reportedly bought the company for $30-$40 million, far below the $120 million in total that investors had put into it. (Walmart has previously said that deal price is inaccurate.)</p>
<p>This has left all employees' stock options worth zero dollars - even though many employees had bought common stock in Adchemy with their own money.</p>
<p>Sources told us that some staff, after working at Adchemy for years, had bought "six figures" of Adchemy stock with their own cash. Now those shares are worthless. All the money in the deal went to investors, who held preferred shares, and even those investors received only a fraction of what they had put in.</p>
<p>So it would seem that in this deal, everybody loses.</p>
<p>Well, not everybody.</p>
<p>This section of the deal's closing documents, sent to Business Insider by a source who was allowed to view it, show that six top executives including Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala all did well in the deal. Nukala will get $2.4 million in total golden parachute compensation. Three executives will get $1.9 million. Two others will get $1.1 million and $780,000, respectively. The payments are all multiples of their regular salaries at Adchemy:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>It is, of course, not uncommon for managers to get larger rewards than their employees when they sell their companies. The issue here is that Adchemy employees (and investors) lost their own cash in the company's stock, but their bosses have been given extra compensation in the deal.</p>
<p>We asked Walmart and Nukala for comment but did not immediately hear back.</p>

This Document From Walmart's Adtech Acquisition Shows How Top Managers Got Rich While Employees Got Nothing

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Adchemy" title_caption="Murthy Nukala" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/528fd5186da8112e57546a67-960/murthynukala (adchemy-060380).jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Adchemy</span></p><p class="caption">Murthy Nukala</p></div><p></p></div></div>Some employees of Adchemy, the adtech startup acquired by Walmart's digital marketing unit, @WalmartLabs, are angry that five members of the company's management became millionaires in the sale, when most employees got nothing. For some staff, the deal even cost them money, according to some former employees.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-acquires-adchemy-2014-5">Walmart acquired Adchemy</a> in early May for an undisclosed sum. Adchemy had taken $120 million in investor funding over 10 years. At the time, it was rumored that the deal was done for less than the money investors had put into it.</p>
<p>Since then, staff who held common stock or options on common stock in Adchemy say they have seen paperwork disclosing who got what in the deal, two former employees tell Business Insider. They believe that the selling price for the company was actually $30 to $40 million, and that Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala and four top executives all got payouts of between $1.5 million and $2 million in the deal. Some former employees have joined a private Facebook group inside which they are discussing potential legal action.</p>
<p>Nukala did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Walmart declined to comment other than to say that the Adchemy selling price was "inaccurate." The company declined to say what it believed the accurate number was.</p>
<p>Adchemy alumni are angry because the employees were holders of common stock, which became worthless when the deal was done for less than the total invested. In such cases, holders of preferred stock - investors, usually - get paid out at 100% of the value of their investment, or more than that, depending on the terms. Whatever is left over goes to the holders of common stock, even if it is only cents on the dollar. In this case, because the deal was done for less than the face value of the outstanding stock, common stock holders' shares were worth zero.</p>
<p>Worse than that, according to an employee who has seen the letter describing the payouts, some employees bought options on common stock with their own money. Some spent a few thousand dollars. A small number bought "six figures" in options over time, one source tells us. That money is now all gone because the common stock became worth $0 at the close of the deal.</p>
<p>"The ones who got hurt the most are the ones who knew the least about how stock options work," a former employee says.</p>
<p>The situation is somewhat unusual because normally in tech startups employees are granted options on common stock for free. It's used as an employee retention incentive. They can vest over time or upon the close of a deal, at which point they can suddenly become worth a lot of money. But because option grants are essentially free gifts, there is no risk for the employee - at no stage is a worker asked to risk their own money.</p>
<p>A source tells Business Insider that between 2009 and 2011, when Adchemy took large investments from Microsoft and Accenture, it looked as if the company could be a prime candidate as an acquisition target at a price that was a multiple of what investors were putting in. So some employees bought options in Adchemy. Other staff who left the company bought options on their exit. In the early years, Adchemy stock was priced at a face value of less than $1, so this seemed like a good deal.</p>
<p>But the company wasn't acquired at that time. Instead, it continued through a chain of six different business model pivots, before agreeing to be bought by Walmart.</p>
<p>In the deal, sources say, CEO Nukala, CFO Rahoul Seth, VP engineering Rohit Deep, research head Esteban Arcaute, and VP product Ethan Batraski all got payments of between $1.5 million and $2 million each.</p>
<p>At the close of the deal, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, a former Adchemy employee who left to go work at Facebook, posted <a href="https://www.facebook.com/a.f.garcia.martinez/posts/10103076541163653">a long rant about the deal on his Facebook page</a>. This part appears to have become true:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Between liquidation preferences and Murthy's stake, common shareholders will surely get nothing. No one who worked for Murthy will see a dime. This is a monumental failure, and Adchemy is one of the great train wrecks of ad tech history.</p>

Some Employees Are Furious At Management Payouts In Walmart's Big Adtech Acquisition

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Adchemy</span></p><p class="caption">Murthy Nukala</p></div><p></p></div></div>@<a href="http://www.walmartlabs.com/2014/05/05/welcome-adchemy-to-walmartlabs/">WalmartLabs has acquired Adchemy</a>, the slightly mysterious Foster City, Calif., adtech company that specializes in "semantic search," or trying to develop meaningful, implied search results that go beyond the mere keywords punched into Google. Semantic search could be a huge business, but only if it turns out that software is better at predicting what humans want the keywords they type in.</p>
<p>Business Insider profiled <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-adchemy-2013-11#!JHXhl">Adchemy's unusual history here</a> - CEO Murthy Nukala took the company through six different business models before today's deal. Adchemy was named on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hottest-pre-ipo-adtech-startups-2013-9#!JH1bO">BI's hottest adtech startups in 2013</a>.</p>
<p>The company is mysterious for four reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>First, it took $120 million in investor funding over 10 years, a massive sum for an adtech company that was never able to describe its revenues publicly or file for an IPO, the preferred adtech track. Most adtech companies have taken less funding than that over the years, even the ones that filed publicly.</li>
<li>Second, the company is virtually unheard of in New York, the capital of adtech. Successful adtech companies tend to have a presence in the city because that's where all the big ad clients' media agencies are.</li>
<li>Third, the true size of Adchemy's business is unknown outside the company. Nukala told Business Insider previously that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-adchemy-2013-11#!JHXhl">the company was never profitable</a>, and that it had about 30 clients spending a minimum of $200,000 a year. That would imply a revenue base of just $6 million annually.</li>
<li>Fourth, a spokesperson for Walmart declined to say how much the company paid for Adchemy. We have yet to hear back from a spokesperson for Adchemy. With $120 million in funding, investors in the company would have been looking for a very large sum in order to get their money back plus a nice profit.</li>
</ul>
<p>The lack of revenue detail and a question mark over the deal value have set tongues wagging in Silicon Valley, especially among former Adchemy employees. Techcrunch said it was <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/walmartlabs-buys-adtech-startup-adchemy-its-biggest-talent-deal-yet/">mainly a talent acquisition</a>. The Wall Street Journal added that <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579544080308837964?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303417104579544080308837964.html">Nukala would not be joining the Walmart team</a>.</p>
<p>One source told Business Insider that he had heard an investor saying the preferred stock holders only got 50 cents on the dollar at maximum (meaning that the company sold for less than what its investors plowed in).</p>
<p>Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Adchemy employee who left to go work at Facebook where he helped create the social network's ad exchange, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/a.f.garcia.martinez/posts/10103076541163653">posted a long rant on his Facebook page</a>. Much of it is personal criticism of Nukala (who sued him when he left the company). But he gave his opinion of the deal, too:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The acquisition price is likely embarrassingly low, otherwise it would have been leaked.</p>

Walmart's Mysterious Adtech Acquisition Has Tongues Wagging Over The Price

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="TechCrunch/Flickr" title_caption="AOL CEO Tim Armstrong." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/536a2f1d6bb3f7157c187ac4-960/tim-armstrong-aol-ceo-7.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/techcrunch/5752180220/in/photolist-9LiqM3-9LfCHi-9LiqGf-9Liqzj-c2Zs7Q-c3JVm7-c3JVDj-c3JUX5-c3JUHw-c3JV8y-c3JWLb-eFkR1p-eFkFag-eFoywg-eFkWYx-eFkV8H-eFs12b-eFrGtw-eFuNgC-eFk7G4-eFnPTX-eFkr1n-eFrSh5-eFkxCZ-eFjYPR-eFrozf-eFk2Xt-eFuLCU-eFrK5S-eFrxUY-eFrq2b-eFrm9A-eFkyjK-eFrVME-eFrSTj-eFk2dV-eFraT1-eFnVn4-eFrzq7-eFs61w-eFkN3x-eFrfDu-eFrWnd-eFrYed-eFrBEf-eFkHjg-eFrqJC-eFkVLk-eFrh8j-eFruYJ-eFra9A/lightbox/">TechCrunch/Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.</p></div><p></p></div>Good morning, AdLand. Here's what you need to know today:</p>
<p><strong>AOL </strong><a href="http://adage.com/article/digital/aol-acquires-convertro-101-million/293068/">paid approximately $101 million to acquire</a> Convertro, an ad tech company whose platform helps marketers understand which of their ad buys are working best and then helps optimize their spending based on its findings. Convertro's technology <a href="http://www.adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/aol-acquires-attribution-company-convertro-for-101m/">will be integrated into AOL's AdLearn ad-buying platform</a>, which has become <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ad-tech-saves-dying-aol-subscription-biz-2014-3/#!Ka5pY">an increasingly important driver of revenues</a> for the former dial-up internet king.</p>
<p><strong>@WalmartLabs</strong>, the retailer's tech and innovation division, <a href="http://www.adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/walmartlabs-acquires-adchemy-for-semantic-search-smarts/">acquired Adchemy</a>, a company currently focused on improving semantic search. Semantic search is a type of software that would allow search engines to understand the actual meaning of what people type into the search bar, rather than just processing the keywords entered.</p>
<p><strong>Airbnb</strong> <a href="http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/airbnb-taps-coke-exec-jonathan-mildenhall-cmo/293053/">hired Coca-Cola executive Jonathan Mildenhall</a> to be its new chief marketing officer. Mildenhall was most recently Coke's senior VP integrated marketing communication and design excellence for Coca-Cola North America.</p>
<p>Adweek reports that <strong>YouTube's</strong> "Google Preferred" offering, which reserves for brands <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> space on the top 5% of its content in different categories, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/youtubes-google-preferred-has-1-ad-tier-too-157507">also includes a special section that includes only the top 1%</a>.</p>
<p>Pet care company <strong>Nestlé Purina</strong> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pet-food-giant-purina-sues-blue-buffalo-2014-5">sued rival Blue Buffalo for false advertising</a>, claiming that Blue Buffalo includes poultry by-product meal in several of its best-selling products, despite advertising that its products are made only with natural ingredients and "real meat, whole grains, and veggies."</p>
<p>The Disney-owned YouTube network <strong>Maker Studios</strong> <a href="http://adage.com/article/digital/maker-studios-omnicom-sign-figure-upfront-deal/293045/">secured a commitment from Omnicom Media Group</a> to spend in the low eight figures on advertising with the network. The deal will give Omnicom clients access to Maker Studios' video creators for branded content and other sponsorship deals.</p>
<p>The Chinese e-commerce giant <strong>Alibaba </strong><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-ipo-filing-s1-2014-5">filed for its initial public offering</a>. It set a $1 billion fundraising target, but reports say that number is just a placeholder and the firm will likely be raising much more.</p>
<p><strong>LinkedIn</strong> <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/05/06/linkedin-international-targeting/">is rolling out segmented advertising for its 200 million+ international users</a>, which will allow companies to serve ads to people based on their preferred language. They will also be able to select which countries they want to be able to see a given post.</p>
<p><strong>Previously on Business Insider Advertising:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-testing-new-logo-2014-5">Netflix Is Testing A New Logo - Here's What It Looks Like</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-acquires-adchemy-2014-5">Walmart's Mysterious Adtech Acquisition Has Tongues Wagging Over The Price</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hot-models-try-to-make-child-poverty-sexy-2014-5">Listen To These Hot Models Try To Make Child Poverty Sound Sexy</a></li>
</ul>

AOL Beefs Up Ad Tech Arsenal With $100 Million Convertro Acquisition [THE BRIEF]

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="AP Photo/Jeff Chiu" title_caption="Apple CEO Tim Cook" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/529e60d36da8112540dfbb9f-960/tim-cook-wave-4.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</p><p class="caption"><keyword id="6354427" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apple">Apple</keyword> CEO Tim Cook</p></div><p></p></div>A lot of people scratched their heads when Apple bought Topsy, a social media analytics company, this week. Why would the maker of iPads and iPhones need a small company that culls data from Twitter?</p>
<p>The likely answer is that Apple needs help with something that is as old as the Internet itself: search.</p>
<p>For most people, "search" stopped being sexy more than 10 years ago, when <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> proved that its search engine was pretty much the only one you needed. But Apple just dropped $200 million on Topsy, likely in hopes of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/03/us-apple-topsy-idUSBRE9B10YK20131203">using Topsy's data to improve recommendations</a> when people search for apps and stuff in iTunes and the App Store.</p>
<h3>There are billions of dollars at stake here.</h3>
<p>Apple is interested in search for a reason. It's part of a new war over search, and billions of dollars are at stake. Most interestingly of all, although Google is hugely dominant in traditional web search it's not at all clear that it's going to win out in new, niche areas of search where companies like Apple and <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> believe millions in revenue lie untapped.</p>
<p>On Facebook's Q3 earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/live-facebooks-q3-earnings-2013-10">developing its Graph Search product, extending it to a "Post Search" tool</a> that has access to 1 trillion data points. Zuckerberg appears to believe that Facebook's store of human likes and status updates could power a more intuitive, conversational search product that may one day compete with Google.</p>
<p>At Apple, iTunes and App Store revenue was $16 billion last fiscal year. It makes more money from songs and apps than it does from selling iPods or Apple accessories. And the apps/iTunes revenue segment looks set to overtake MacBook sales (which are in decline) sometime in the future.</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Getty Images/Justin Sullivan" title_caption="Google CEO Larry Page" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51f2ed276bb3f7da7b000015-960/larry-page-40.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">Getty Images/Justin Sullivan</p><p class="caption">Google CEO Larry Page</p></div><p></p></div>The new war over search.</h3>
<p>Note that at $16 billion, Apple's "search" - i.e. song and app discovery - business is already worth about one quarter of Google's pure search business (about $60 billion), if you want to think about it that way.</p>
<p>And although Google supplies search services to thousands of third-party businesses, it has absolutely no access to Apple's App Store. (In fact, the App Store competes with Google Play, the Android equivalent of the App Store.)</p>
<p>So even though Google may have thought it won the search war in the early 2000s, that was merely a battle. The larger war has simply entered a new phase.</p>
<p>This is the war over "semantic" search.</p>
<p>Here are some of the search skirmishes happening right now:</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="AP" title_caption="Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/516dc286eab8ea2f6c000006-960/mark-zuckerberg-on-phone%202.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">AP</p><p class="caption">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg</p></div><p></p></div>Facebook is developing an artificial intelligence and speech recognition business.</h3>
<p>Ever wondered why search on Facebook is so weird, compared to search on Google? That's because you're doing it wrong. Google has trained you to punch in keywords that describe what you're looking for. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-artificial-intelligence-and-speech-recognition-2013-10">Facebook is hoping that its searches will answer more "latent" or abstract queries</a>, where you don't specifically know what you're hoping to find, such as, "what are my friends' favorite movies?"</p>
<h3>Search is also becoming more conversational.</h3>
<p>In the future, using a keyboard to operate a device will probably seem about as weird as punching in lines of BASIC code does now. We will talk to our computers, through the successors of products like Apple's Siri, Google Glass, and Google Now, the Android voice assistant. Search requests will become more conversational and less keyword intensive - which is why creating algorithms that can handle the nuance of conversation rather than just dictionary definitions is so important. <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-enables-ok-google-hands-free-search-on-pcs-178286">Google recently extended voice search to PCs</a>.</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Paramount Pictures" title_caption="Some people searching for info in the future." class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/529e62fb6da8113244dfbba2-960/star-trek-into-darkness-zoe-saldana-zachary-quinto-4.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">Paramount Pictures</p><p class="caption">Some people searching for info in the future.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
<p>Note that Apple acquired Topsy to improve its personal recommendations. The new search is more about guessing what you, personally, really want, rather than returning keyword matches. Google Now predicts what you want, such as warning you of Calendar appointments even if you have forgotten to ask it to. Facebook's Graph Search is another example: It's about "semantic" searches where there is no known, specific answer - the user just wants to uncover a trove of "abstract" information.</p>
<h3>Google has launched a Wikipedia-killer.</h3>
<p>You may have noticed that when you search for certain well-known topics in Google, you get a box of info at the top of the page with background facts about the thing you searched for. Much of the information is just text that Google has created - you can't click on it to go anywhere. This is <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-knowledge-graph-121585">Google's "Knowledge Graph."</a> Google is building a database of facts hoping that it can answer a large number of popular searches directly, without requiring you to click away onto another site. It's a big threat to Wikipedia (even though it draws info from Wikipedia), because a lot of people could get their info from Google's page rather than from the web site that generated the data in the first place.</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="tldtoday / YouTube" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/529e633e6da8114144dfbba4-960/gold-iphone-5s-4.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3rwLUhGqq4">tldtoday / YouTube</a></p></div><p></p></div>Google has launched an internal app search product.</h3>
<p>One front that Google is fighting fiercely on is mobile apps. Remember when people used to wonder whether the rise of the iPhone - and the fun apps it carries - would seal off the wild 'n' woolly web inside a walled garden where everything was beautifully (if boringly) organized for you? Well, Google has found a spyhole into that wall: A <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2013/10/indexing-apps-just-like-websites.html">search product that indexes the inside of app content</a>.</p>
<h3>Google has made search more "social" with Twitter and Google+.</h3>
<p>Because there are no cookies on Apple's mobile iOS devices, Google's search results are degraded - your search history is denuded. So Google is fighting back: <a href="http://searchengineland.com/2013-the-year-seo-changed-forever-178530">Search results are now affected by your Twitter and Google+ activity</a>.</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="CNN" title_caption="Susan Bennett claims she's the voice of Siri." class="zoomin" href="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/529e635a6da8114444dfbba5-960/susan-bennett-siri-5.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/tech/mobile/bennett-siri-iphone-voice/index.html">CNN</a></p><p class="caption">Susan Bennett claims she's the voice of Siri.</p></div><p></p></div>This is why Apple is persisting with Siri (even though iPhone users hate Siri).</h3>
<p>If Google Glass takes off, it would be a huge competitive threat to Siri. Apple may have bought Topsy to make Siri more useful. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304854804579234450633315742">The Wall Street Journal says:</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Another possible application of Topsy's technology is to refine the search feature in Apple's Siri voice assistant in the iPhone and iPad. Siri already asks users to access their Twitter account to personalize search results. Apple has purchased at least one other startup with expertise in search. It paid more than $50 million last year for Chomp Inc., a tool for searching mobile apps.</p>
<h3><keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword> searches are a huge threat to Google.</h3>
<p>Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has made it no secret: He wants people to use Amazon to buy pretty much everything that Amazon could possibly sell, not just books and movies. But the key to that is whether you start your search on Amazon or somewhere else, like Google.</p>
<p>So Google recently began serving up "Product Listing Ads" when you make shopping-related searches. They're little boxes with a photo of each product in them and a price underneath. They have turned into <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-product-listing-ads-revenue-2013-7">a big business for Google because they sit in front of Amazon's results</a>, and point to non-Amazon sites.</p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Businessweek" title_caption="Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/529e638becad04ae2adfbb9c-960/jeff-bezos-108.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">Businessweek</p><p class="caption">Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos</p></div><p></p></div>Smaller companies are experimenting with semantic search layers underneath Google.</h3>
<p>A California adtech company called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-adchemy-2013-11">Adchemy - and its venture capital funders - has made a huge bet on finding a semantic layer</a> of meaning beneath shopping searches on Google. Adchemy believes that if a company's online product catalog can be organized properly, it can auto-generate high-performing product listing ads on Google. But that requires an algorithm that re-interprets the original Google search into something more meaningful - a huge task.</p>
<h3>And the winner will be ...</h3>
<p>Clearly Google has a huge head start, and vast resources to throw at the problem. You bet against "Don't Be Evil Inc." at your peril. But who would have thought, back in 2005, that a "directory" of student mugshots would turn into a $6 billion business that siphons ad money from Google?</p>
<p>That's how fast these things move.</p>
<p>We don't know who will win the new search war. But there are clues as to how this might shape up. There may be room for a variety of search verticals.</p>
<p>Look at advertising: Increasingly, digital media companies are eschewing traditional banner ads in favor of "native" ads. These are unique ads that can only be bought on one property, like Facebook's news feed ads or Twitter's promoted tweets.</p>
<p>It's not hard to imagine that Facebook, Apple and others might want native search, too.</p><p class="tagline">Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.</p>

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