To quote paraphrase Paul Kedrosky, I am so conflicted in this post, it will hurt you to read it. But truth is I’m conflicted both literally and figuratively. In other words, I have some conflicts of interests; but mainly, the web entrepreneur in me likes this news but the analyst thinks otherwise.
Unfortunately, in one post, I am going to piss off IAC CEO Barry Diller, everyone at Ask.com, Crispin Porter Bogusky, the ninjas at AskaNinja.com and of course, John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media (probably others too).
But in light of IAC’s $100M annual advertising budget for Ask.com, I am going to go out on a limb and say that IAC needs to stop spending money in a crazy and reckless manner on ill-planned, ill-fated and ineffective ad deals and invest in acquisitions in the search space.
Today, Federated Media proudly announced that Ask.com was sponsoring AskaNinja.com:
“Marketers with the courage to let their brands be a part of those conversations engender trust and affinity among those communities in a way that traditional advertising can’t. Ask.com’s sponsorship with video podcaster Ask A Ninja is a shining example of conversational marketing done right.”
John Battelle is a smart and savvy man, but starting off with “marketers with the courage” implies that someone needs to be crazy to be doing what he’s about to announce.
But we digress.
The idea that Ask.com is a ”natural fit with AskaNinja.com” is something that a novice B-school marketing student should be credited with, not something leaders of online advertising should be proud of, frankly.
After all, Ask.com’s video search is powered by Blinkx. In other words, it’s not as if Ask.com is a natural leader in video ads and they’re jumping on video content to convey some kind of leadership position.
Even if they were, this is a waste of money… though don’t get me wrong, as a producer of video content, it reinforces that mainstream advertisers are moving online and embracing video and I love it. But I don’t use this blog to solely push the company interests, I say it as I see it and this one is murky at best.
I won’t spend much time in this post telling Ask.com how they should be advertising, that would not be classy (I’m NOT trying to put down AskaNinja…) but I will say this:
There are 45 search engines that get 1% of the search pie. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com and AOL get 99%.
But guess what?
Ask.com gets less than 5% of that market share and if Ask.com spent $100M investing or buying a myriad of the search engines ranked 5-50 (and/or those beyond the 50th spot), it would be money better spent.
Advertising, while it greases the online landscape wheel, is to a large extent a questionable expense. Admittedly, so are investments in new technologies and startups.
But if I were a shareholder in IAC and Mr. Diller told me we’re going to a) spend $100M in advertising or b) invest $100M in new technologies, I’d go with b).
I don’t necessarily want to pretend this notion is 100% mine, but I’m also not sure I’m at liberty to say whom I spoke regarding this concept.
Barry Diller recently said in a 60 Minutes interview that he was “the decider” at IAC, who in 2005 bought Ask.com for $1.85B and has since been encouraged by the excitement over search to invest in Ask.com but see its market share sag, and go down, at the expense of Google’s share.
It has gone on to spend lavishly on advertising, but I challenge any one at any level involved with this reckless spending to tell me how they justify any of it? Oh, I was an investor of IAC after it bought Ask.com, and then I sold because I had experienced a nice gain.
But back to the point: frankly, it’s as ridiculous as TheMan.com sponsoring the SF Giants ballpark, and that looks sane compared to some of the tactics used here.
Here are some facts:
- MSN is also advertising aggressively. Result? Loss of market share.
- Google never advertised a penny on branding, it is synonymous with search.
- Ask.com’s advertising hitherto has bombed. Its made me less inclined to use it, because I would hate for marketing spinsters to think that the Unabomber motif nonsense is effective, and offensive. I know I just pissed off CPB, one of the most influential ad agencies out there, but they too need to hear this, because obviously some of their success has gone to their head. Folks, that’s a bad campaign, in poor taste and with no way to convert to effectiveness.
Related:
- Ask.com is worth $3.15B
- Ask.com Falls in the Forest, will anyone care?
All right, notable conflicts of interest things I should candidly admit to:
- Mojo Supreme runs and operates MetaMojo.com, a search network not in the Top 50.
- Mojo Supreme, by way of WatchMojo.com, is a video content producer, publisher and syndicator, though not really competitive with AskaNinja broadly operates in the online-only, made for Web video content space.
- Barry Diller, like me, was pushed out of News Corp. at one point in his career.
- I’ve contacted Ask.com (and all major search companies) regarding business development partnerships regarding our vertical search and video metasearch products, which I think are a great fit with any media company or mass market search provider.
- I am pretty sure my ad guy has contacted Ask.com regarding online advertising, though we would never recommend anything this asinine.
- I’ve worked with CPB in the past, and hopefully, in the future.
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