« Previous post
Next post »

July 31, 2007

IAC Up, Ask Down In Second Quarter

Duncan Riley

17 comments »

iac.jpgA strong second quarter by IAC saw a 78% increase in profits, mostly driven by assets sales and reduced costs.

The positive headline results did not flow through to the struggling 4th ranked search engine Ask.com, which saw a decline in revenues. The second quarter decline comes despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign that should be resulting in increased traffic and revenue to the site.

The exact amount of the decline was not disclosed.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. JM

    July 31st, 2007 at 11:53 am

    Ducan

    Why so biased when it comes to Ask and their advertising?

  2. Jono

    July 31st, 2007 at 11:53 am

    What is IAC and how is it related to Ask.com?

  3. James Thomas

    July 31st, 2007 at 11:56 am

    IAC owns several major properties, ask.com being one of them. they also own bustedtees and collegehumor.

  4. Al Ramirez

    July 31st, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    The big deal about Ask.com is that IAC is Barry Diller’s company. They own ticketmaster, city search, match.com, lendingtree.com, and HSN. WHile most of their properties seem to be real leaders Ask.com just doesn’t seem to have the mojo that google and yahoo do.

  5. Sung

    July 31st, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Why would the advertising campaign result in increased traffic and revenue? Its one of the worst advertising campaigns in history!!

  6. kent

    July 31st, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    The Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign for ask has to be one of the worst campaigns in history….the billboards failed to generate the controversy it intended to, the commercials on tv was confusing in terms of message. I mean, if you had never heard of ask, how does having kato kaitlin as the centerpiece of the commercial make ask appealing at all?
    If they wanted to get a d-list celebrity, at least get someone who had some credentials…maybe a former child star? Just look at the resurgence of vh1 thanks to all those reality shows starring former tv stars.

  7. JM

    July 31st, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    Sung

    Are you sure about that? Do you work for the agency or Ask? Do you know the campaign goals. You may have thought it was awful, but Ask had some wins on this one, especially there Sponsorship of Ask A Ninja.

  8. DJ

    July 31st, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    > The second quarter decline comes despite a
    > $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign

    That post was supposed to read “comes *because* of a $100 million…”, right?

    The Algorithm isn’t popular.

  9. Danio

    July 31st, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    JM obviously works for Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. Let’s face it…the ads may not have been the only reason Ask seeing an uptick in revenue, but they certainly didn’t help. A partnership with Ask a Ninja is meaningless if there’s no money behind it.

  10. Sung

    July 31st, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    “The Algorithm isn’t popular” - exactly.

    JM - what type of goals do you think they were successful with?

    1) Building buzz / awareness - nope
    2) Casting Ask in a positive light to consumers - nope
    3) Casting Ask in a positive light to customers (search engine marketers) - nope
    4) Driving traffic to the site - nope
    5) Increasing search market share - nope

    Spending $100 million with Google would have given them results that were likely 10 times more effective and actually increased their market share.

  11. Harrison

    July 31st, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    I agree with you, Sung. Their “Algorithm” campaign seems like a disaster. It’s too geeky for the general public, yet most geeks don’t like it.

  12. Sniffer

    July 31st, 2007 at 3:25 pm

    Duncan, you are an idiot. Read the release and the info and you’ll see that IAC was dragged down by Ticketmaster and HSN not Ask.

  13. tessastewart

    July 31st, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    So, do geeks like Ask.com? Is the product worthy? Or is it a bad product, that tried to use advertising to make a difference. Sometimes no matter how brilliant or horrible your advertising is — or how MUCH you advertise — it just doesn’t make up for a product that isn’t good or has something new to offer. Google has just become a synomyn for online search — how do you beat that?

    What would all you smartypants have done to solve Ask.com’s problem?

  14. trade dvds GURU

    July 31st, 2007 at 3:39 pm

    IAC would be HUGE if it had SwitchPlanet.com in its portfolio. :)

    Dump Ask.com and move us right in its place!

  15. Duncan Riley

    July 31st, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    Sniffer
    I didn’t say IAC was dragged down by Ask, I noted that Ask declined. Not sure how much more clearer I could be.

  16. Dominic

    July 31st, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    Should have never changed it’s name. That alone changed the user base.

  17. Paolo

    August 1st, 2007 at 5:29 am

    Hello there

    sorry Duncan but I really don’t get it. Are you talking about this company: http://tinyurl.com/3dwug8 ? If so, I don’t really see any positive signal there… The other way round… Barry Diller said, “We are not satisfied with these results - whether driven by market conditions or our own hand - and are taking every appropriate action to have the back half of the year reflect a demarcation point to a 2008 more reflective of our ambition.”

    /best

    Paolo

« Previous post
Next post »