July 10, 2008

Ask.com and Photobucket Enter Image Search Partnership

Ask.com and Photobucket (think Flickr + YouTube) have announced a multi-year partnership. Photobucket will now display an Ask.com search box, and includes syndication of sponsored listsings and display ads. Photobucket sees 44 million unique users worldwide each month.

“Photobucket has one of the largest online audiences, and now Ask.com provides these consumers with the answers to the questions they ask every day," said Andrew Moers, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Ask.com Partner Network. “This alliance furthers our strategy to bring Ask.com to consumers worldwide through a broad range of Internet access points.”

Photobucket President Alex Welch spoke of the importance of search for users of the photo sharing site: "Photobucket users view, store and share billions of images each month and Ask.com will serve as a great resource in helping those users find specific content quickly and efficiently.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 8, 2007

Ask.com Providing Celebrity Search Info For Entertainment Tonight

Ask seems to be making use of television aggressively of late. The commercials doing direct comparisons to Google and now they are sponsoring "celebrity search" at Entertainment Tonight.

The popularity of celebrity helped the development of a segment on ET about the top three celebrity searches. I have yet to see a segment but I am thinking that the search numbers may not be a big issue.

"Product integrations, in my mind, perform a different task than a pure advertisement," Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone told Advertising Age. "An advertisement is part of a larger brand campaign where you control the message and you control the creative. With product integrations, it's more of a real-life example of your product in action, which has the positive of actually demonstrating the benefits of your product."

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:12 PM | Permalink

August 6, 2007

Is an Ask-Microsoft Partnership on the Horizon?

Ask.com and parent IAC have been cozying up to Microsoft lately, leading to the question of what will become of the current 5-year-old partnership Ask.com has with Google once it comes up for renewal at the end of the year.

The most recent tie-up only unofficially involves Microsoft and Google. It's a deal that IAC made with aQuantive to serve ads on several of its properties, leaving DoubleClick the dust. For those of you confused about the Microsoft-Google angle, remember that Microsoft is in the process of acquiring aQuantive, and Google is in the midst of acquiring DoubleClick. Hence, IAC left future Google for future Microsoft.

Last month, Microsoft's Office Live added Ask Sponsored Listings to its adManager service. A week later, Microsoft and Ask teamed up to present a united front in the fight for user privacy, intimating at the same time that Google was not as concerned with privacy as they are. And of course, the two are linked by the common bonds of Steve Berkowitz, who left Ask.com in 2006 to head Microsoft's search efforts.

IAC's Barry Diller was rumored to be considering a change of ad partner when the original deal expired in 2005, but a 2-year extension was agreed upon by both parties. Diller has been coy lately when asked about future plans. During an investor call last week, Diller said: As it relates to building our very long association with Google which expires on December 31, we are in a position we had hoped we would be when we originally got into this and purchased this Ask company, which is that we have interesting discussions from the three ad networks. That interest level is good enough for us to believe that whatever happens with this we're going to be in a very good position in ‘08 for our ad businesses.

Ask has also been hard at work improving its own ad capabilities. It expanded its Ask Sponsored Listings product last fall, and is in the process of launching a contextual ad network across its own IAC-owned sites and third-party sites.

Think these clues are leading up to an Ask.com-Microsoft partnership? Share your thoughts in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:22 PM | Permalink

February 20, 2007

Ask.com Renews Deal with LookSmart

Ask.com and IAC Advertising Solutions announced today that it would renew its license with LookSmart AdCenter for Publishers through 2009. The LookSmart service provides an auction platform, algorithmic based ad server and reporting engine, as well as an API for agencies and large advertiers. Ask uses LookSmart's AdCenter product as part of its Sponsored Listings program.

The automated open-auction system allows search marketers to purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its publisher network. Ask.com Sponsored Listings currently process more than five billion queries each month, and supports over 30,000 advertisers bidding on more than 10 million keywords.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 1:33 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

PPC Back Fill Map or Who Is King Of Garbitrage

While this is not news - it really should be. Most of the small search engines are arbitraging one way or another. And the Big Three (clearly 3 since Ask back fills Google PPC) make their cuts on the front end.

A Bruce Clay map for all the PPC partnerships and the rules that govern them would be handy.

My rant here started when I noticed at Ask that we were not being served Ask ads but rather our Google ads. Spoke to one of the people over at Ask and was told that they back fill with Google when the CTR drops below their acceptable level.

Guess that is the level where Google would pay them more to put their ads in... so some of our $10 plus Google terms pay Ask more (rumors of what percentage vary but let's work with 60%) - they get $6 a click from Google when we advertise for say $3 on Ask.... so the CTR would have to be 200% to make them enough money to change....

They are not the only ones.... I see many of the small engines pushing their results out into even thinner search provider portals.... the search results may stay at the site but the results are feed straight from another engine... yet many of these engines also arbitrage their onsite inventory with one of the Big Three so they force their advertisers to bid up to at least what these other people are willing to pay.

Not making much sense - after a while people are going to realize they are just using variations on Google, Yahoo and MSN and just go there first.

I want to start a Back Fill Map - so everyone post what you know in the forum and I will develop something that we all can use.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:05 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

Searches Up, Dude! Ask.com Sponsors Surf Contest

Search and surfing will converge in Half Moon Bay, California in early 2007, when the Mavericks Surf Contest takes place. Known to surf pros and fans of the sport as the world's premiere big-wave surf event, this season's contest offers everyone the chance to surf Ask.com for all the details and get a variety of results from various Ask sources, including maps and directions online or via Ask.com Mobile search.

"Ask.com® is excited to be an integral part of the preeminent big-wave surfing event, and, as a leading search engine, to be the official go-to source for information for all things Mavericks," said Greg Ott, vice president of marketing. A quick search for Mavericks Surf Contest on Ask.com® will give fans quick access to webcasts and viewing locations, videos, bios on the surfers and the history of the event. In addition, with Ask.com® and Ask.com Mobile(tm), fans can find Mavericks images, news, maps, walking and driving directions, blogs and other information across the Web for fans everywhere. "We're excited to support this great surfing event, as well as to be a resource for all the Mavericks fans," remarked Ott.

On just 24 hours notice between January 1 and March 31, 2007, 24 legendary big-wave surfers will make the pilgrimage to the treacherous Mavericks surf break to compete for the famed title, and $75,000 in prizes to be distributed to the top surfers.

Surfers and fans alike can track the waves and stay informed on contest announcements at the official website maverickssurf.com.

Note: You would think that I got this info directly from Ask.com, since I receive a lot of press releases from the search engines, but no -- this one actually came from an PR company who has me on their list as an action sports journalist. So I just had to post since it was related to my two favorite things: search and outdoor sports.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 5:42 PM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

Ask.com To Power Lycos Search & Search Ads

Reuters reports that Ask.com has reached a deal with Lycos to power their search engine and search ads. Lycos is the 5th "most popular U.S. Web portal." Ask.com will provide Web search, image search, zoom search and ppc ads for the Lycos Network.

Postscript: Just got the press release, posted below...

Postscript 2: It looks like Ask.com ousted Microsoft's spot with Lycos.

Ask.com Selected to Power LYCOS Network Search Multi-Year Agreement Calls for Ask.com to Provide Search and Advertising Across the LYCOS Network OAKLAND, Calif. and WALTHAM, Mass.– November 1, 2006 – Ask.com, a wholly-owned business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) and LYCOS, Inc.(www.lycos.com), a leading web portal, today announced a multi-year agreement whereby Ask.com will be the search and sponsored listings provider for the LYCOS Network, including LYCOS.com, Hotbot.com, Tripod.com and Angelfire.com. Under the terms of the agreement, Ask.com will provide branded algorithmic search, including Web Search, Image Search, and Zoom Related Search, as well as the Ask Sponsored Listings advertising product across the LYCOS Network. LYCOS is the fifth most popular portal in the U.S., consistently ranked as a top 20 U.S. Web property, with more than 6 million monthly unique visitors using LYCOS Network Search. In addition, LYCOS will transition its current sponsored listings advertisers currently using its pay-per-click platform, InSite AdBuyer, to Ask Sponsored Listings, and will promote the Ask.com PPC product to advertisers throughout the LYCOS Network. “We selected Ask.com over other providers because of its great search technology and tools like Zoom related search, which cannot be found on other engines,” said Brian Kalinowski, chief operating officer, LYCOS, Inc. “By partnering with Ask.com, we aim to deliver a world-class search experience to our millions of LYCOS users.” “Ask.com has worked very hard to develop one of a kind search technology and search features that help users get the information they want more quickly,” said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “With stiff competition in the marketplace for syndication deals, we are pleased that LYCOS recognized the merits of our search technology and advertising products. This new relationship will enable Ask.com to broaden its search offering to new users while also increasing the reach of Ask Sponsored Listings inventory.” Under the agreement, Ask.com will provide the following: · Web Search – Delivers highly relevant search results through its ExpertRank proprietary algorithmic search technology, which ranks results based on popularity within topic communities on the Web, rather than mere link popularity. · Image Search – Combines Ask.com's proprietary index of pictures with ExpertRank and patent-pending image search technologies to deliver dramatically improved relevance and quality of search results. Ask.com Image Search has been touted by some as best of class for searching the Image Web. · Zoom Related Search – Offers conceptually-related suggestions to narrow or expand a search query. Zoom related search is placed on the right side of the search results page where most search engines place advertisements. No other search engine has the ability to offer conceptually-related suggestions. · Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) Search Advertising – Provides highly relevant keyword-targeted, pay-per-click advertising. Advertisers bid for placement through Ask.com's automated open-auction system that also allows marketers to manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its publisher network. ASL sources more than 5 billion queries each month, and supports over 10,000 advertisers bidding on more than 10 million keywords. About Ask.com

A leading search engine on the Web, Ask.com combines world-class search technology with one-of-a-kind search tools to help people get what they are looking for faster. Ask.com sites include Ask.com US (www.Ask.com), Ask.com Deutschland, Ask.com Espana, Ask.com France, Ask.com Italia, Ask.com Japan, Ask.com Nederlands and Ask.com UK. Additionally, Ask.com syndicates its search technology and advertising units to a network of affiliate partners. Ask.com is a division of IAC Search & Media, a wholly-owned business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI). Ask.com b-roll footage is available at www.thenewsmarket.com/ask.

About LYCOS, Inc. LYCOS, Inc. (www.lycos.com) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daum Communications Corp., a leading Internet portal and e-commerce destination in Korea with a growing presence throughout the Asian markets. LYCOS, Inc. creates and operates search, community and technology lifestyle sites including LYCOS.com, Hotbot.com, Tripod.com and Angelfire.com. Other LYCOS products and sites include LYCOS Mail, LYCOS Phone, LYCOS Entertainment, LYCOS Music, LYCOS Games, LYCOS Planet, and GetRelevant. LYCOS was acquired by Korean Daum Communications Corp. in October 2004 and has its U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Daum Communications Corp. is traded on the KOSDAQ: 035720, www.daum.net.

### ©2006 Lycos, Inc. Lycos® is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc. All other product or service marks mentioned herein are those of Daum Communications Corp., Lycos, Inc. or their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:51 PM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Why IAC's Pronto Will Succeed: Partnership With Ask

There are many reasons to like Pronto among the many crawler based shopping search engines:

- Comprehensiveness (read last week's press release) - Upcoming features that provide a better user experience - Monetization through an ad system not called Google AdSense - Not relying solely on the PPC engines for traffic - Online ad market is hot and will continue to grow - Ecommerce is hot and will continue to grow

While these things are the building blocks of a great new shopping service, they aren't the be all, end all. Other companies can and will develop powerful crawling technology (although Pronto is obviously proud of their own). There are other companies in the shopping space whose sole focus seems to be to provide a better user experience. Other companies will develop powerful ad systems (Kevin Ryan has done it before) or focus on high CPM based graphical advertising. Other companies have and will continue to focus on marketing channels besides the PPC engines. Oh, and everyone is benefiting from strong ad rates and ecommerce growth.

So you want the real reason why Pronto will succeed? The company is part of the IAC family. At some point in the next year, assuming Pronto continues to innovate and build on its solid foundation, the company will replace PriceGrabber as Ask's Smart Answer partner for all product searches. This was by no means confirmed with Pronto or Ask or IAC, but it's an obvious evolution.

And here's why it matters:

Ask.com currently has a 6% search marketshare with 6.5B searches being conducted in August (according to comScore). Assuming no growth in monthly searches ever (which isn't realistic), that means there are 390m searches conducted on Ask each month. I'd estimate that 20% or 78m of those searches are product related. Now if the Smart Answers featuring Pronto are triggered for about 70% of those searches (probably a very high percentage compared to the number PriceGrabber gets), there will be aprx. 54m total impressions for Pronto's listings. Assuming a CTR of 6% for those listings, Pronto will receive aprx. 3.2m clicks per month on it's listings or aprx. 40m clicks per year. A strong start.

There are a number of business issues to work out before Pronto replaces PriceGrabber. First, I don't know when PriceGrabber's contract runs out. I asked a long time ago and got no answer. Second, I'm sure that PriceGrabber's listings monetize a hell of a lot better than Pronto's listings (every PriceGrabber click is paid). So if Ask changes partners, it's going to lose out on some revenue...yes, Pronto can and will increase it's CPM, but it could take a long time to be really competitive with the established players. The business decision for Diller and crew then revolves around the opportunity cost of cutting revenue (albeit probably a small percentage) for Ask in favor of building up an ancillary IAC brand. Knowing a bit about Diller's track record, I have a feeling he's going to be fine with backing Pronto.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:01 PM | Permalink

January 24, 2006

When Carl Talked to Barry: Sources Say Time Warner Investor Carl Icahn Has Had Conversations with IAC/InterActive (Ask Jeeves) CEO Barry Diller

According to this Fortune.com story: Time Warner: Is Icahn looking to deal with Diller?, that legenday investor Carl Icahn (controls about 3.1% of outstanding TW shares) and who is preparing to wage a proxy fight for control of the TW Board of Directors has had conversations with IAC/InterActive president, Barry Diller.

From the article: Icahn is also seeking to merge some of Time Warner's businesses -- AOL, the TV networks, and the movie studio -- with an Internet portal. A source says Icahn has had discussions with one or more portals about combining the businesses and then spinning off the publishing and cable operations. And other sources confirm there have been discussions between Icahn's camp and IAC, the Internet company run by Barry Diller [and new owner of Ask Jeeves]. How could Icahn pry those businesses out of Time Warner using IAC, given that TWX is nine times bigger than IAC? That's unclear. It's possible that Diller, Icahn, and [Bruce] Wasserstein could come up with additional partners. [My emphasis]Right now Diller says the discussions are neither hot nor ongoing.

Is a discussion(s) between Icahn and Diller a surprise? Not really.

You probably remember that right before the Google/AOL deal was announced last month, Icahn issued a public statement calling that the Google deal a "disasterous decision," if it, "makes it more difficult in any way or effectively preclude a merger or other type of transaction. In a statement he specifically mentions the names of four companies:

IAC/InterActive
eBay
Yahoo
Microsoft

Icahn's statement added: ...a recent Goldman Sachs report concludes, "In contrast to the conventional perspective, we believe that eBay, followed by InterActive Corp, would provide greater incremental benefits to AOL's option value with fewer conflicts of interest than Yahoo! while MSN and Google would provide the least incremental benefits."

Interesting days indeed. Stay tuned.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:56 AM | Permalink

January 9, 2006

Google Now Providing Personalized Home Pages for Current Communications and Dell

Numerous posts from various sources point out that in recent days Google has released two new "personalized" page services for a couple of sites. Here's a quick review: PaidContent, Micro Persuasion, Google Blogoscoped, and Inside Google report that Google is now providing "personalized" pages for Current Communications, a broadband over power lines company, that Google invested in last summer.

We also read that the Dell.com personalized page that comes as the default on browsers shipped with new Dell systems is now being provided by Google. In the past, Dell's personalized home page was provided by My Way, a part of the Ask Jeeves. The Dell/MyWay page is still live.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:20 PM | Permalink

October 31, 2005

AllRecipes.com Cooks Up Smart Searches for Ask.com

I recently blogged that Ask Jeeves was offering a new Smart Search with direct links to recipes from the AllRecipes.com database. Today, the Dayton Business Journal offers a profile of this recipe/cooking vertical.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:46 PM | Permalink

May 23, 2005

BitTorrent Plans to Launch Search Engine & Carry Ask Jeeves Ads

While several earch tools exist to find BitTorrent material (movies, music, software and other files), the service itself has not offered its own search tool. That's about to change as BitTorrent launches its own advertising-supported search engine in the next two weeks.

Sponsored links will come from Ask Jeeves (apparently the Premier Listings that Ask sells directly, rather than the paid listing that it carries from Google).

BitTorrent speeds internet file transfers by shifting the bandwidth burden off the publisher, and distributing it among users downloading the file: Everyone downloading a file over BitTorrent is unobtrusively uploading it to other users at the same time so that large, popular files actually move at a faster rate than obscure ones.

The new search engine takes that dynamic into account. It resembles Google in operation, with a simple interface and results ranked by an automated process. But unlike a general web search, the BitTorrent web crawler interacts with each torrent behind the scenes to determine the number of nodes downloading and uploading through it. That lets the search engine order its results by the throughput of each torrent.

More in the Wired News article: Next for BitTorrent: Search. It also discusses the many copyright issues that BitTorrent might face as the service becomes more well-known and material becomes even easier to access.

"I think the search engine itself shouldn't be illegal, but I think [founder Bram](Cohen) will find himself inundated with notices of infringing material," says [Stanford Law School Professor Mark] Lemley. "He may find over time that his full-time job is turning off links." Moreover, being right might not be enough to keep Cohen and BitTorrent clear of the working end of a lawsuit. "I would be very surprised if he didn't get sued, because they've gone after a number of people who have much less connection to infringement," says Lemley.

Postscript: Prospect of Search Ads on P2P Site Rattle SEMs from ClickZ has a few more details from Ask and comments from search marketers on source exclusion.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:34 AM | Permalink

May 12, 2005

Dogpile Gets New Look, Overlap Comparison Tool & Study

Dogpile has released a significant upgrade to its meta search engine, allowing easy comparison of search results across the major search engines. Dogpile has also introduced a new comparison tool that visually illustrates search engine overlap (or lack thereof) in the top results for Ask Jeeves, Google and Yahoo.

In today's SearchDay article, Dogpile Enhances Meta Search, Offers Comparison Tools, I take an in-depth look at these new services, and also comment on some new research that quantifies search engine overlap and why it's important for both searchers and search marketers alike.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:39 PM | Permalink

March 2, 2005

Ask Jeeves Now Powering Lycos Web Search

Score another deal for Mr. Jeeves. Word this morning that Ask Jeeves is now powering web search on the Lycos.com site. Details in this news release.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:44 AM | Permalink

February 19, 2005

Ask Jeeves UK Gets Hello Celebrity Content

First, a brief article on the Revolution web site discusses a new deal that will allow Ask Jeeves UK to use content from Hello! magazine (celebrity news and profiles) for their Famous People Smart Search service.

Second, Ask Jeeves UK is providing search services on the Virgin Radio Toolbar

Posted by Gary Price at 12:20 PM | Permalink

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