TV Blitz Helps Ask.com Grow Market Share
During the past 14 months, Ask.com (formerly AskJeeves) has run two heavy TV campaigns. The first was in September 2005, the second March 2006. In fact, the company is in the midst of another fall campaign now.
The fourth most-used search engine in the U.S., Ask.com was hoping to lure users from the big three: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search.
Could well-executed TV creative broadcast at high-enough saturation levels 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 our research team at MarketingSherpa partnered with online market research firm Compete to find out. The thin line in the chart below 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.
Click here for chart. Source: Compete for MarketingSherpa, August 2006
Methodology: Data is based on a 2 million-plus-member panel that is representative of the overall U.S. online population. Copyright: MarketingSherpa 2006
The answer to the question then would appear to be, 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.
But a look behind the numbers tells another story. We found that from August 2005 to August 2006, Ask.com was the only major search engine to grow market share other than 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 Website or service. Because one or two TV-driven visits per consumer do not ensure long-term loyalty.
Anne Holland is president of MarketingSherpa, a research firm publishing buyer’s guides and benchmark data for its 237,000 marketing executive subscribers. For a copy of MarketingSherpa’s new Search Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2007, go to www.sherpastore.com/Search-Marketing-Benchmark-SEO-PPC.html?8966.
© MarketingSherpa, Inc. 2006
