Anne Holland

New Data on Ask.com's TV Ad Impact: Should Google Watch Its Back?

October 23rd, 2006

Over the past year, Ask.com (formerly AskJeeves) has run two heavy TV campaigns. The first was September 2005 and the second March 2006 (and they’re in the midst of another fall campaign now.)

Ask.com, which is the fourth most-used search engine in the US, was hoping to lure users from the big three: Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. (The days when AOL Search was one of the big three are long gone.)

Could well-done TV creative broadcast at high-enough saturation move the needle? Is it possible to break Google’s stride toward desktop domination? It’s a question Microsoft especially would love to know the answer to.

So, MarketingSherpa’s research team partnered with Compete Inc. to find out. You can see the results on the chart I’ve taken from our Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007 below.

Ask.com Chart

The thin line above shows Ask.com’s ad spend. It’s pretty
dramatic; yet, at first glance, the results don’t appear to be. After a fairly major media spend, Ask.com’s online market share went from just over 3% to a bit over 4.5% and then subsided a bit.

The answer to the question then is, yes, you can grow online market share, but perhaps only a little if your competitors are heavily entrenched and you won’t keep your peak forever.

However a look behind the numbers tells another story. From
August 2005 to August 2006, Compete and MarketingSherpa research also discovered that Ask.com was the *only* major search engine to grow market share besides Google. Yahoo! and MSN Search both lost measured market share.

In that light, Ask.com’s achievement is a major triumph.

Lesson learned? Google is a juggernaut. Expect MSN and Yahoo! to do heavy TV. And, if you do invest in major TV, be darned sure you’ve got a must-return-to site or service beforehand. Because one or two TV-driven visits per consumer do not ensure long-term loyalty.

Note: As with all MarketingSherpa content, the above chart is copyright protected. Please do not copy it; however, you can link to it on this permanent link.

Useful links related to this article

MarketingSherpa’s SearcnMarketing Benchmark Guide 2007:
http://www.sherpastore.com/Search-Marketing-Benchmark-SEO-PPC.html?8966

MarketingSherpa’s vendors:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vendors.html

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