A third player may be joining the Pay Per Click search advertising industry. Ask Jeeves (ask.com), a popular search engine is planning on launching their own service to allow people to place advertisements within their search engine results pages. Ask Jeeves has already been making significant money running Google sponsored results ads. By switching to their own system they won’t have to share the profits with Google however they won’t have as many advertisers using the system either, at least not straight off the bat. It will also create another activity (or even an industry) for web marketers — optimising ads within the Ask system.
SEARCH ENGINE ASK JEEVES REPORTEDLY plans to soon market its own pay-per-click platform, OnlineMediaDaily has learned. Currently, Google powers sponsored listings on Ask Jeeves.
Reportedly, Ask Jeeves’ paid search will look similar to Google’s system. It primarily will be based on keyword bidding, but with some measure of relevance, such as click-through rates, factored into the advertiser’s ultimate cost. The minimum bid will reportedly start at 5 cents.
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It is understandable that the Ask people are a bit annoyed to have to chuck over a big chunk of their advertising money to one of their rivals.