Tech Town, NC

We all know about the failed ad campaign of “the algorithm” and those shabby guerrilla marketing spots that Ask.com tried to indoctrinate us with. But, other than giving Kato Kaelin another few minutes of fame, they didn’t accomplish much, and Ask saw its share of search queries drop from 5.1% in the Spring of 2007 to 4.5% as of this June according to ComScore. They’re not thought of as a major player in search anymore.

But they’ve recently been testing some new video ads that focus on their core in a much more sensible way. The spots pose simple but tempting queries like “is chocolate really bad for dogs?” and “what toys are dangerous for babies?”, and pairs them with the ace in the hole of ad agencies everywhere - video of dogs and babies. It’s a tempting click that takes you straight to your answer, via ask.com. IMHO they’re very well done. They reinforce the brand, deliver on the promise, and are pretty cute as well.

Recent Alexa rankings show that the engine may be gaining some ground, and in search every inch counts:

With paid search, we’re talking about a $12 billion market here, and growing. So if Ask has indeed increased its traffic as much as Alexa indicates, they could be looking at tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue growth. Of course, Alexa is quite often wrong, and Compete is showing no such bump, so this may be a false alarm (though compete updates less frequently). that being siad, I thing the new strategy of focusing on everyday answers is a much better bet than a mass market campaign, especially one that just didn’t makes sense.

For more background, check out Don Dodge’s great piece last year on why 1% of search market share is worth over $1 billion in market capitalization.