Discovery and recidivism are again the big challenges for magazine brands venturing into this space. Users not only need to find the right skills and install them to the device, but also must remember the right branded "invocation" term (i.e. "Alexa, open  Good Housekeeping"). Williams says that despite VoiceLab's warning about zombie skills,  Allrecipes continues to see installation and usage growth. They are addressing the challenge with a dedicated skill page, FAQs and video tutorials distributed across social media.

Chris Papaleo, head of emerging tech and partnerships at Hearst, a company division that tests and learns from emerging technologies, suggests that promotion from Amazon has been a key discovery driver.  Elle's horoscope was a "Skill of the Day" and enjoyed featured placement in Alexa newsletters. Part of the strategy of starting with a horoscope skill was to provoke recidivism with information that invited daily, habitual use. But as in the app world, publishers can't rely on the capriciousness of platform promotion. "What we can control is the quality of the experience," Papaleo says. And again, as in the app economy, word-of-mouth and user ratings power adoption.  Good Housekeeping's stain advice skill, for instance, got voted and featured in Alexa's customer favorites section at the end of the year.

Despite some similarities to the app-iverse, VUI does pose a unique challenge for media brands. This is an iconless realm without multiple search results. The "invocation" word is the new keyword of voice search that is likely to become hotly contested terrain. Knowing this, Papaleo and his team extended conversations with Amazon about the trigger for  Elle's horoscopes app, which provides daily readings for all signs. Rather than the user having to remember to invoke the  Elle brand to launch the skill, Hearst secured the generic term so that "Alexa, ask Horoscope for Gemini" works. "We own that 'Horoscope' term right now," he says. "But we fully expect the voice search economy to explode and generic terms to be highly valued, and costly to publisher partners."