I saw a commercial this weekend for Ask.com, in which a guy was talking about Ask.com and saying "librarians love us." Since the man on TV claims we love them, I figured I should check it out.
I played around with it a bit, and it's actually pretty cool. Early things that I like:
1. Ways to narrow or broaden your search by subject (links grouped on the side) - this is like what EBSCO is doing with their databases now. It's a neat way to discover new information and go off in different directions.
2. "Preview" binoculars for many sites, where you can hover over the binoculars and see the site it's linking to without actually going there.
3. Lots of integrated tools, like images, news, shopping, conversion, etc. - sound like any other search engine we know?
4. Nice clean interface, a la Google.
5. You can save selected search results - like a clipboard for websites that you find. You can set up an account to save permanently, tag results, etc. Very cool.
6. Has a kids version too.
7. I didn't do a lot of search comparisons yet, but the few I did were fairly comparable. Google seemed better but Ask.com's added value makes it a contender.
8. Maps feature - it will animate your route for you, tell you how long it will take you to walk, etc. Neat!
Things I didn't like so far:
1. There are sponsored links at the top and bottom and they're not set off well, so you have to look carefully to see that they're ads.
Anyway, it's pretty slick. You should check it out, so that if someone asks you if it's true that you love it (like the man on the TV said) you can give an informed answer one way or the other. It has a nice "about" section that gives a good overview.
Here's a link to an article about the ad campaign, or read it in the extended entry section.
Enjoy!
Liz
Ask.com Launches Second Post-Jeeves Campaign
› › › ClickZ News
By Kevin Newcomb | May 3, 2006
After showing the power of Ask.com's tools to civilize wild primates, the butler-less search engine will launch a second wave of TV ads today showcasing one of the company's top scientists.
Known as "AG" to his team, Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive VP of search technology, is one of the main developers of the Ask.com technology and a champion of improving the user experience of Ask.com, according to Greg Ott, Ask.com's VP marketing.
"Apostolos brings the true Ask brand forward. His passion as one of the site's creators really comes through on camera," Ott told ClickZ News.
Ask.com is investing heavily in marketing this year in a bid to gain market share from the dominant players Google and Yahoo! The latest report from comScore Media Metrix found Google accounted for 41 percent of search queries in January 2006, followed by Yahoo at 29 percent, MSN at 14 percent, and Ask.com at 5.6 percent.
Gerasoulis, a former professor at Rutgers University, stars in the latest set of :30 and :60 spots, created by Berlin Cameron New York. He was asked to use Ask.com to find out about various pop culture references that he was not familiar with, such as hip-hop culture, reggaeton, or cooking, and then to explain what he found while the film rolled.
In one, Gerasoulis shows how a search for "pimped out cars" can lead to useful information about custom rims and find sites that use related slang terms like "tight" or "phat" as well.
"Search engines understand text. Ask.com understands concepts," he says in his heavy Greek accent. "Pimped out cars are related; tight cars are related. Ask.com is a 'pimped out search engine'; it is very tight," he says.
In another, Gerasoulis explains that librarians have always been drawn to Ask.com for the way it groups information. "If librarians love us, I think the world should love us too," he says.
The sessions led to the creation of several :30 and :60 spots, which will be rotated into the plan over coming weeks. The ads will replace the current ads in the media buys made for the "Use Tools. Feel Human." campaign. Those ads, created by TBWA Chiat Day, have been running since early March, when the Ask.com redesign was unveiled.
The reason for splitting creative duties between agencies was a matter of speed, Ott said. "You have to be fast moving in this industry. We wanted to have multiple projects running in parallel," he said.
TV buys include network prime, early morning and cable placements. Online creative will not change, but will continue to stress the unique features of the site without reusing themes from the TV campaign, he said.
During parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp's quarterly investor call yesterday, IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said that early marketing returns from the "Use Tools. Feel Human." campaign were very positive, with up to 30-percent increases in daily query volume common in April.
Ott said the current campaign has delivered "tremendous" results, with increases in top of mind awareness and consideration, as well as usage and unique users.
"Best of all, it's helping to drive users to what makes Ask unique and better: the tools we have that help people get what they're searching for faster," Ott said. "We're building on that momentum with the new campaign."
Posted by biomedref at May 9, 2006 03:34 PM