• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 20, 2016

Trying to understand consumer intent through search isn't easy. We talk about it all the time like it's as simple as dunking an Oreo cookie into a frosty glass of cold milk, pulling it out and tasting the chocolaty goodness. Unless you hold down the cookie it bobs up again, rather than sinking. What's the point, you're probably thinking.

Artificial intelligence and cognitive language processing will become more advanced in the coming year, and marketers need to begin looking at new ways to explore intent and meaning from keywords and interactions, dig into the data, rather than let the words go allow them to disappear and lose the answers.

"We're constantly looking for new sources of data that let us go after the core problems," said Daniel Singer, who became CEO at Mavens of London.

The agency has been analyzing several intent signals from the language people use when purchasing a gift -- the way people think about the recipient changes the language of the search, not from a he or she perspective, but the emotional connection. People shift to more personal language such him, men or man, to husband or boyfriend.

Singer's experiences with philosophy and law led him to better understand what people can do with publicly available data -- search, social and other platforms -- and the diversity in which it can be used.

"I didn't realize that I could have done better work in consultancy and regulation until I began working at Mavens in 2012, and that's where I realized the possibilities" he said. "A number of projects I did in the past could have been significantly improved if I would have just understood the power of data."

One of the first projects Singer worked on at Mavens was using search data to understand the problems people have and where they go for advice.

"If you know what people search for you can also see how they rank that information and figure out a way to get the information back to people in the form of advice about the choices they make," he said. "It gives brands a way to return much more accurate information."