When Search is not Enough Case Study: The Advertising Research Foundation

1. When Search is not Enough Case Study: The Advertising Research Foundation Gilbane Boston November 27, 2007

2. Why search matters? • Explosive growth of unstructured/structured data • Business critical application • Intranet often overlookedas source of knowledge capital • Search has become too hard • Search is the content enabler • Storage without search is useless

3. Exalead’s answer • Global search-centric company • Enterprise software vendor • Web search engine (exalead.com) • Search as you think, by serendipity • Next-generation products • Simplicityof consumer products • Featuresof enterprise products • Complete product range • Full-featured, fully scalable and real-time products • Both packaged and fully customizable products

4. Information Access: simple or complex problem? C O S U M E R I Z A T I ON Complex problem Simple solution Complex problem Complex solution Complex Problem American Greetings us.118.com tayait.com Simple problem Simple solution Simple problem Complex solution ARF Complex Solution

5. About The ARF • Founded in 1936, the premiere advertising industry association. • Leads key industry learning initiatives that increase the contribution of research to better marketing, more effective advertising and profitable organic growth. • Mission is to improve the practice of advertising, marketing and media research in pursuit of more effective marketing and advertising communications.

6. ARF Members: Global Brands

7. Values Guide: Knowledge Solutions • Relevance • Quality • Access • Absorption • Collaboration • Application to Business Decisions

8. Knowledge Solutions Initiatives • Help Working Groups manage communications to external audiences and improve their project management • Promote interaction among members and increase their value to one another through a social network • Extend the reach and impact of conferences, Thinkshops and councils • Make ARF Knowledge Easier to Find and Access For Members and Staff • Provide a tool for knowing: • Locate • Explore • Discover

9. Why “Knowing” Is Important • People scan, they don’t read • They want direction and answers • Results need to tell a bigger story than “here’s a list of documents.” • Staff and members need to: • See results in a context • Quickly spot relevant items • Filter results to narrow – or expand – interest • Preview results • Easily work with a result set • Be guided to related concepts • They want emotional satisfaction

10. Project Scope and Sources • Scope • Support mission: advertising, marketing and media research that improves the effectiveness of advertising and marketing communications • Sources • Shared Drive • “Best of ARF” collection: Selected Conferences, white papers, standards and guidelines, and reports • ARF Publications: J. Advertising Research (housed in a third-party database) • ARF Websites: General Web site and focused secondary sites • Industry Sources

11. Selection and Vetting • Selection Criteria • Goal: To develop a focused collection of authoritative, high quality documents • a “treasure trove” not a “warehouse” • Determine the most relevant documents for members and staff • Vetting • Knowledge Solutions domain expertise guided selection and quality judgments of file system and web-based sources • Ambiguous selections or those with lower confidence were reviewed with Chief Research Officer

12. Software Selection • Criteria: • Unified search of file system, web, database • Easily handle multiple file formats • Leverage ARF “folksonomy” and adapt to changes • Preview documents • Extract entities from document properties – and within the document - and use to filter results • Accommodate custom synonyms and furnish tools for creating custom entity extraction rules • Limit/Restrict Sources based on user profile and security • Launch document in appropriate application • Integrate with third-party solutions • Affordable

13. ARF Constraints • Taxonomy • ARF would not build a taxonomy • Resource issues, time, maintenance • Entity Extraction • Key entities needed to be available out of the box • New entity extraction rules should not require a lot of effort • Document Preparation • Need to work with existing documents “as is,” only minor clerical tasks can be performed

14. Knowledgebase Setup • Sources Configuration • File System • Built upon an existing folder structure (folksonomy) that reflected the “big buckets” of ARF knowledge • Segregated documents that were strictly internal from those that were suitable for members • Web Sources • Document Preparation • External audience - reviewed and modified the Properties fields, especially Title and Author, to improve indexing and results pages – • Internal-only documents - left alone because the numbers are so great • Source Relationships • Respect third-party security

15. End-User Experience • Basic search and query for all users idea engagement

16. Search By Serendipity

17. Leverage Beyond User Search • Integrate with third-party applications as a service • QnA system • Exalead will parse Questions and Answer, then • Query the knowledgebase, and • Present top three results as part of the response

18. Questions?