InfoSpace Moves Find It Forward With New Release

InfoSpace continued the product evolution of its Find It mobile application with its latest release earlier this week, offering better features for consumers and a performance ad model for advertisers.

This version of Find It offers consumers "eyes free driving directions" with an audio message walking drivers from point A to point B. The Kelsey Group tried the voice-delivered driving directions and found them to be every bit as good as those loaded onto car navigation systems.

InfoSpace will probably add features such as weather and traffic to future versions in order to make the application indispensable to consumers. Behind the application sit more than 15 million points of interest for the user to access, whether they are at home or traveling. InfoSpace plans to raise its profile after the new launch with a marketing campaign aimed at business travelers. Don't be surprised to see messages next time your plane is delayed at Denver International Airport.

The latest version of Find It now comes with a performance model for advertisers. On any given search, the user might be shown a number of listings options and while ad revenues are critical for the long-term success of Find It, InfoSpace remains insistent on delivering results in order of relevancy. Now, users will see highlighted listings within the relevancy ranking. These listings will be monetized when users place a call or ask for driving directions to a store location.

As we wrote in LMJ in June this year, Find It is an appealing application for users and advertisers. The greatest remaining challenges are getting users to discover, adopt, use and reuse the application.