MARKETING

ASK.COM

By-

Utkarsh Saxena

ASK.COM:-Introduction:-

ASK.COM previously known as ASK Jeevesis a question answer -focused web search engine founded in 1996 by GARRETT GRUENER and Davide Warthen in Berkeley, California.

ASK.com search engine was to allow the searchers to type questions in natural language in order to get results.A cartoon character butler named Jeeves was company's mascot in 1998 February ask Jeeves for kids was launched.

In 1999 company launched its first national advertisement campaign. And stock value soared to a high of$ 190 per share its revenue also grew exponentially, company generated $ 23000 in sales in 1997$8,00,000 in 1998$22 million in 1999 $58 million in2000

The company was led by Robert W. Wruble who was appointed as president in may 1998and became CEO in November 1990.

Issued initial public offering of stocks was completed in July 1999 and gained spectacular success . It was the third most successful first day performance in business history.

Company’s downfall began after 1999, profit failed to happen the company sustained to annual net losses that reached $ 675 million by 2001.

On December 2000, A. George was appointed as new CEO, he had 27 years experience in Anderson Consultancy.

In 2005 IAC (interactive corp.) acquired the company. In 2006 the company was rebranded and named as ASK.COM and new logo was given.

ASK.com was not only search enginebut also launched a mobile which had a very innovative feature called “speak to click”

Jim Safka new CEO in January 2008 he reorganized the things and aimed at helping ask.com to grow in market share by 5%

Google, yahoo, and live struggle are main competitors of ASK.com

Still it stands and give tough competition because it have got the innovative ideasand one of them is ASK3D which was later copied by yahoo and live struggle.

Re-building ASK.com:-The company made some marketing strategies.1. Innovation that matters a user a lot.2. To establish it as ‘other search engine’ in the

space .3. Give the existing user a reason to become loyal.

To make above strategies successful it have developed it’s search and advertisement product & spent $100 million in self advertising.

Revenue ModelsSearch engines had three main revenue

streams:1. Advertising2. Internal company networks ‘Enterprise

search’3. Providing search at 3rd party sites.

Google is major player in all three.

Models used in recent are as follows:1. Pay Per Click (PPC) :- It is defined simply

as “the amount spent to get an advertisement clicked.”

Working of PPC:- Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (often based on a keyword), usually using online tools to do so. The auction plays out in an automated fashion every time a visitor triggers the ad spot.

OR the advertiser and publisher agree

upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click.

Tools For AdvertisementGoogle Adsense:- Google AdSense is a

program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. In Q1 of 2011 the revenue generated by Adsense was 28% of total revenue of Google.

Products Of Ask.comAsk Eraser:- Ask promises that they don’t

store data on searches, giving users to search anonymously.

Ask3D:- A new innovation In which search page is divided into three segments middle one is search topics in right option to make our search wider or narrower and in left side images, brief from Wikipedia.com, and dictionary meanings of keywords used for search.

Thank You