• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer, January 27, 2009

I have been having trouble getting my head around ChaCha, the human search engine where people, not just algorithms, answer text and voice questions. And then Vice President of Marketing Susan Marshall told me some of the results of the company's most recent user survey. "We find the majority of users, more than 80%, are under 25 -- a lot of teenagers and college-aged students."

So now at least I understand why I don't quite get ChaCha. It's the same reason I feel like an alien intruder when asking my daughter why she doesn't just call her friend after the 40th text exchange in five minutes. I am still old and crotchety enough to think I am forestalling the day her mom and I have to bring her in for the inevitable thumbectomy. "You're going to need those things for something productive some day, you know. You may want to save the tendons for adulthood."  

For the uninitiated, ChaCha is a text and voice-based mobile search service that has 55,000 registered "guides" responding via SMS to all manner of question. Users ask for answers to trivia questions, for a joke, movie suggestions, even advice about life quandaries. Marshall says the topics are a blend of social (settle a bet) to entertainment (what DVD to rent) to utilitarian (where can I buy a Wii online and what time does the movie start?). The guides use their own set of online references and the system can automate replies from a growing database of previously asked and answered questions.

Marshall says there are 3 million unique phone numbers in the database now, with about 1 million monthly uniques. The service fields 300,000 questions a day, largely because ChaCha fans get hooked and keep coming back for more -- on average, 10 times a month. About 16% of the users have smart phones, and there is a large concentration of use in the Midwest.

Now, I do understand the discreet charm of SMS. You can communicate with your teen daughter, for instance, without hearing the attitude. I appreciate that. But I never got into SMS as an everyday search tool. The impulse to use ChaCha still seemed odd to me until Marshall mentioned that a good many of the young searchers actually get into exchanges with the guides. They start talking to one another in a chat/IM mode. Search as we know it evolves into a conversational tool and anonymous social networking.

In fact, it is that conversational quality that informs ChaCha's early forays into ad support. The company needs to start monetizing, especially since it pays its guides by the answer. Like other SMS ad networks, ChaCha is starting to append text ads into an available slot of about 27 characters on the bottom of replies. Early text campaigns for Coke and McDonald's started last year, and the ad product itself has been available since November.

Marshall says that the best results come from campaigns that evoke the conversational ethos of the service. Rather than directly pitch a tune-in campaign for a realty TV show recently, they started with a tease: "Have you made your New Year's resolution?" A series of branched and automated SMS exchanges finally ends with the tune-in message for the show. The campaign led 21.57% of recipients to interact with the messaging until the end.

Marshall says that typical response rates are in the 4% to 5% range, but part of that performance has to do with the good match between early advertisers and this demo. "When an ad wants to target entertainment or use celebrity, we are finding that with this young demographic it is pretty amazing."

And it is all about the audience. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the early results from ChaCha is that the ad effectiveness does not seem to depend on contextual relevance, ads targeted to the types of questions. "We thought that would be a big deal," says Marshall, "but it seems to be more about the user and the demographic and whether the product or the offer resonates."

ChaCha is learning a lot about its users just from the question history, which can be mapped against responses. An advertiser can know not only who responded to an ad but what other interests they may have, whether they skewed female, had tech or entertainment interests, etc. While ChaCha doesn't have personal profiles on its users, it does have algorithmic tools like a "genderizer" that can tag user attributes simply by the kinds of questions they ask.  

Not to beat my familiar "form follows function" drum I have been banging for the past few weeks, but ChaCha's early success seems to underscore the obvious about mobile media. The best ad formats and messaging here will appropriate the basic functionality of the device, conversation.  The audience for ChaCha is seeking and finding that human connection in the machine.  It is something much more than search.

Here is an actual question to ChaCha the other day: "Why should I give him a second chance? My boyfriend told me he cheated on me. He said he was drunk and was crying and felt horrible." Being a hopeless Dad, I read this and thought only one thing.

"What, now?" my daughter asks when I start peering at her suspiciously. "What do you think I did now?" She is getting good at recognizing my suspicious glances, because, well, I am the paranoid father of a teen girl who more likely than not is doing something at any given moment that will scare the crap out of me. Of course, it wasn't her.

If you are curious, here was the ChaCha guide's ("Desiree P.) response. "You need to decide for yourself if you want to be with someone who has such a small amount of self control. Alcohol is no excuse."

I may be way outside the ChaCha demo, but this 50-year-old just found a use for the service. When my daughter asks the hard questions, I am texting Desiree first.