After sprucing up Ask.com earlier last summer, parent company IAC began spending $100 million this year on marketing to raise awareness of the Ask brand. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing a lot of Ask.com ads on TV lately. (And I pretty much only watch TiVo, yet they are so ubiquitous that they still catch my eye as I fast-forward through the commercials). So how is that ad campaign doing?

Taking a look at IAC’s earnings today, it is not clear whether or not the expensive ad campaign will even pay for itself. Out of IAC’s $1.5 billion in total quarterly revenue, its media and advertising businesses (of which Ask.com is a part, along with CitySearch and Evite) accounted for only $190 million. While those revenues were up 40 percent from last year, the search portion of that saw a greater contribution from the Ask network (search results it powers on other sites) than from Ask.com itself. In other words, IAC’s media and advertising businesses saw a $54 million bump in revenues last quarter. Not all of that was due to Ask, and of the part that was, more than half came from traffic outside of Ask.com. The point of the ads, of course, is to drive traffic to Ask’s main site.

At least Ask is not losing market share. According to comScore, the search market share of Ask’s network as a whole nudged up 0.2 percent in September versus August to 4.7 percent (compared to 57 percent market share for Google, 23.7 percent for Yahoo, and 10.3 percent for Microsoft). Both Google and Yahoo still gained more share in September than Ask.com, although it did take some share away from Microsoft. And if you look on Compete.com, traffic to Ask.com itself does look to be picking up.

UpdateIt’s been pointed out to me by someone who know that the $100 million is the total amount the search engine is spending on marketing worldwide, including much more than the TV spots (such as online ads, agency fees, and internal marketing salaries). The TV spots are still a significant chunk of it, but not the majority. Also, the most recent TV ad campaign just started in September. This Hitwise graph suggests that it contributed to a nice 23.7 percent jump in Ask’s share of executed searches from August, 2007

So it could just be too early to tell whether the TV ads are driving enough traffic to Ask.com to be worthwhile. But if they don’t show up more significantly in the numbers next quarter, those ads will be seen as a boondoggle. They are entertaining, though.

Enjoy the latest one, which pokes fun at Google (and which makes you think that maybe Ask won’t be renewing its search advertising relationship with Google when the deal expires at the end of the year):

Ok, we got a copy of the actual Ask.com TV ad we mentioned earlier today and uploaded it to YouTube. This will supposedly be broadcast on TV tonight for the first time. The basic idea of the ad is a guy singing “I got what I was looking for,” with singing women in the background singing “He got what he was looking for.

I guess what he was looking for was a bunch of singing women with swords.

The ad also briefly shows some of the features from Ask3D, which was released last night. Still no word from Ask PR on our request for comment, and I don’t think we’re going to be hearing from them.

Update: Video is here.

I can’t guarantee these are authentic, but a tipster sent us these photos of what they say is a new television campaign by Ask.com that should be showing starting tonight.

This seems to be another provocative ad from Ask.com – it includes half-dressed women dancing with swords on some kind of stage. I’m not sure what, if anything, this has to do with the Ask search engine, but it certainly shows that the company is committed to seeing this campaign through.

I won’t comment until I see the whole ad myself. If anyone comes across it, please let us know.

Ask.com did not respond to a request for comment.

Forget the advertising campaign debacle: There is some real news about Ask.com tonight.

The search engine, which is currently the fourth most used search service, is publicly re-launching tonight around 9 PM PST. You won’t see this when visiting the site: The home page and all results pages have been significantly overhauled and a ton of new features and resources have been added. The company has been testing the changes with a small sample group since late last year.

At the core of the changes is a move towards simplicity, though, which may count for more than the other changes. There is a significantly less cluttered home page with lots of white space. Users can skin that page with a number of options by clicking on “skins” below the search box (my favorite is “azul” if you have a wide enough screen – this is the image at the top of this post). Ask says that users will also be able to upload their own images within a month or so. Google recently started offering users the ability to personalize the home page as well.

The search results themselves are highly customized depending on what type of search is being conducted. Search for a music artist and see images of the artist along with clips from tracks via iLike in the right sidebar (Ask’s sister company, TicketMaster, recently invested in iLike). Search for a city and get different results in the sidebar – a map, weather information, the current time, photos and wikipedia information.

Ask also has a preview feature for search results – click on the binoculars next to a result and a window pops up to view the page. Ask will also tell you the weight of the page, whether it uses Flash or other plugins, and other data.

There are literally dozens of other features as well. Results can be bookmarked by clicking on the “+” icon to the right of each result, for example. Click on advanced search options and it bring it right into the page instead of redirecting like other search engines. And my personal favorite: the Ask logo and header is off to the left, meaning far more results are loaded onto each results page.

The left sidebar contains options to narrow or expand the search, which Ask CEO Jim Lanzone says are clicked on very often to help people find the right query.

Overall this is an excellent upgrade, and it may help Ask grab a market share point or two against the competition. If every 1% of the search market is worth $1 billion or more, then this investment will certainly pay off.

Since we first covered the Ask Algorithm campaign May 4, IAC has committed $100 million to expanding the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky designed “viral” campaign nation wide. The original stand alone obscure references to the algorithm have been complimented with an Ask logo on billboard advertisements, a positive step forward.

However one billboard is sure to turn heads and it’s for all the wrong reasons:

Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter probably hated the algorithm as well, is he on the next billboard?

What in the world is Ask thinking? What sort of warped company uses the name of a terrorist in an effort to increase market share for a search engine?

Given that the Algorithm finds Jesus you’d think the Algorithm could find sensitivity training as well.

The zany thing about the whole campaign is that Ask actually knows how to run a decent advertising campaign. The Ask ads appearing on TechCrunch through the FM Network provide compelling information and even the occasional third party product endorsement. They maintain decorum whilst building much needed product and brand awareness for a search engine that most people outside of tech haven’t even heard of. Do a straw poll of 6 non-tech/ geek friends about whether they have heard of Ask, the closest they usually can get is Ask Jeeves, and they normally add “is that still going?” Algorithms mean nothing to this group and this should be the core target market for Ask.

(photo via Search Engine Roundtable)

It’s Friday night in London. You’re out on the town with some friends at the local pub, drinking some beers and the call of nature beckons. Making your way to the restroom you’re confronted with advertising that tells you that 75% of online information goes through one company. On the other side of the Pond, a soccer mom makes her way along the New Jersey Turnpike, passing a sign that reads “The Algorithm is from New Jersey”. Of course whilst the first example begs the question “are they taking the piss?”, both have been exposed to the latest viral advertising campaign from the IAC owned Ask.com.

There’s no official word on how much the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky designed campaign costs, but it would be fair to presume that it’s not small change: Algorithm and “Information Revolution” advertising has been spotted on both sides of the United States and throughout the United Kingdom. But is it working?

The numbers would suggest that it isn’t.

Despite the big spend, the campaign has been too clever by half. Does the average internet user even know what an algorithm is, or more importantly even care? Do pub goers in the United Kingdom care that Google controls over 75% of search in that country?

If the Algorithm constantly finds Jesus, why can’t it find increased market share?

To be a little fairer to Ask though, the comScore traffic figures only cover the period to the end of March, the campaign was rolled out in February and into early March, and things look a little brighter in April according to Alexa:

More recently Ask has announced its intention to expand the campaign to television. Greg Ott, Ask.com’s VP of Marketing writes after making the announcement that the company wants people to think of the Algorithm in the same way people think of “Intel Inside”. And yet it still doesn’t find traction for me. Perhaps I’ve been around too long and still yearn for the days of Jeeves when you visited Askjeeves.com if you had a question you needed answered, instead of Yahoo! Answers.

There’s one thing that I’ve always considered Ask to have going for it, ask.com as a URL, 3 letters, easy to remember…indeed the simplicity and marketing potential of the name was one of the reasons given when Jeeves was dropped, and yet not one advertisement drives home the name. If a tree falls down in the woods and no one is around to hear it- does it make a sound can be equally applied to Ask: if a search engine does a viral marketing campaign and no one understands it, does it make a difference?

Photo credit: Hessam on Flickr.

A year ago I wrote a post called “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without” and listed thirteen startups whose products made a real impact in my life. Those were the products that I loved, and used every day. I enjoyed sorting through the hundreds of startups that we had written about, and picking just a handful that made a real impact on my life. It was so much fun, actually, that I’m updating the list this year.

Seven of the companies are still on the list. Six have dropped off to make room for new products, and I’ve added two more to round out the list to fifteen total products. Here’s the current list, in alphabetical order, of products I use every day and couldn’t live without:

Read More

We’ve previously named Yahoo Maps the top maps application on the Internet.

Tonight we’re not so sure. The new AskCity product, which combines Ask.com’s existing maps product (overhauled last February) with deep local content (information, reviews, etc.) and very good search, will make it our go to source for maps and local business information. Ask CEO Jim Lanzone gave us a walkthrough of the product a few days ago, and we are impressed with what they’ve done.

The reason that AskCity has such good content is that they’ve taken it from CitySearch, another service owned by parent company IAC. CitySearch has ten years of local content, and that is now deeply integrated with Ask’s maps product.

Key categories are Businesses and Services, Events, Movies, and Maps & Directions. The three pane interface allows users to conduct multiple searches, revise itineraries, create multi-point driving or walking directions (only Yahoo and Ask offer multi-point directions). Restaurant reservations are linked via OpenTable, event tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster (another IAC property) and soon they will integrate movie ticket purchases through Fandango. Searches can be refined by neighborhood, cuisine or movie genre.

A Users can also pin items (events, places) onto a map, draw their own notes on the map, and send a permalink to the customized map to friends for printing or for their comments.

Ask.com, which owns the most popular stand alone web based feed reader, Bloglines, has just rolled out its long awaited new blog search engine.

Ask/Bloglines has been the subject of a considerable number of jokes over the last year, after promising a blog search engine last summer. The new engine should put those jokes to rest. And the company is taking the product and the launch very seriously – Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone walked me through the product personally earlier this week.

The search engine has two separate user interfaces. It can be found on the Ask.com home page (link to blog search on the right sidebar) as well as Bloglines. The underlying engine is the same, although the interface and functionality is slightly different on the two sites.

Ask.com Blog Search

Searches can be conducted by “posts”, “feeds” or “news”. The news option conducts a search from 7,000 pre-approved blog and news sites to reduce noise.

Results can be narrowed to a specific period of time (anytime, last hour, last week, etc) and can be sorted by relevance, date or popularity. “Popularity” is determined based on the their “ExpertRank” algorithm and several sources of Bloglines data, such as subscriber count, links, citations, etc. A blog with more links and more subscribers on Bloglines will have more relevance than other blogs. “Relevance” factors in both popularity and freshness to give meaningful recent results.

There are a number of other features worth noting. Feeds related to the query are listed on the right sidebar, along with RSS information for subscriptions. Each search result contains additional options as well: a binoculars graphic (scroll over for popup with last five posts from result), “Save” (save result to a clipboard), Subscribe (to a feed reader) and Post To (Digg, Delicous, Newsvine etc.).

Advanced search features are accessed via an javascript drop down menu at the top of the screen.

Bloglines Blog Search

Bloglines is using the same back end search engine as Ask.com, although the interface and feature set has notable differences. A key feature is a “+” button next to each result. Click on the button and the full post is presented with original formatting (not quite the original formatting actually, but pretty close).

Another difference – each result has a “more info” link that shows the number of bloglines subscribers for that blog and any citations for that post.

My Thoughts on Relevance:

There is a big need for the equivalent of Google Page Rank for blog search relevance. Link analysis on a post just doesn’t work – the content is too fresh to develop meaningful link analysis results. There are now three experiments going on with relevance: Technorati bases relevance solely on “authority” of the blog, which is calculated solely on unique inbound links to the blog itself. This works much of the time, but can break quite easily. TechCrunch, for example, can be the highest rated blog on just about whatever I write about, regardless of whether I know anything about it. If I write a blog post on a political issue, for example, it will appear at the top of results even though I have no qualifications for doing so. Bloglines is taking a different approach, by factoring in a number of statistics such as Bloglines subscribers, link analysis and other information. This may eliminate or reduce the non-topic-specific Technorati authority problem. Sphere is making an effort to assign real authority to a blog on a given topic. They look at links in and out, as well as a semantic analysis of the blog itself. Theoretically, on Sphere a blog that is relevant in one area won’t be relevant in another. It’s a good theory and may work over time in practice as well. But the blog search relevance battle is far from over, and I look forward to new experiments over time.