Microsoft Office Live To Let Customers Purchase Ads On Ask.com
Ask Sponsored Listings is going to be added to Microsoft Office Live's adManager Beta search advertising service. — This is reportedly the first time in five years that two of the top five search engines have joined together to offer search engine ads to advertisers.
Context & Ripple Effects
Ask.com has spent the summer of 2007 arguing that its future lies less in unseating Google at the query box than in monetizing differently: a May Read/WriteWeb piece asked whether advertising, not search, was the real story, and Ask followed with a results-page overhaul (Ask3D), its first TV commercial, and the 'Google Free Fridays' campaign casting itself as the free alternative to Google.
The reported move puts distribution behind that pitch. By folding Ask Sponsored Listings into Microsoft Office Live's adManager Beta — reportedly the first pairing of two top-five engines on search ads in five years — Ask would reach Microsoft's small-business advertiser base without building a sales channel of its own, while Microsoft broadens ad inventory for a service still in beta.
First-order effects
- Small businesses using Office Live's adManager Beta could buy Ask.com search placements alongside existing inventory through one interface, giving Ask Sponsored Listings an advertiser pipeline it did not have to staff or sell directly.
Second-order effects
- If a top-five engine will resell a rival's listings, other second-tier search properties face pressure to syndicate their ad inventory through third-party platforms rather than compete for direct small-business ad budgets.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward search advertising consolidating around reseller platforms, where engines compete for users but interoperate for advertiser distribution — eroding the assumption that search rivals never co-sell.
The trend: Search advertising is drifting toward syndication economics, with smaller engines renting distribution through larger rivals' ad platforms instead of selling inventory alone.