Rumour: ASK Axes PPC Product, Sacks Sales Team

Just when i think the UK market is going to get interesting with 4 major player one drops out. oh well guess we still have MSN on the way.

Are you referring to UK specific, or across the board?

It was unclear.

It was unclear

Seems like just UK,
Hi, I'm at Pubcon and after noticing ASK are giving away 25$ PPC coupons to participants, I asked them if the program is here to stay or not.
The people from ask told me that the UK staff is being dismissed (which is distressing) but business is usual at ask PPC product and US salesmen, european customers can still acquire ppc appearance from ASK.

Nick, I had Barry ask Ask about the PPC program discontinuing. All rumors and speculation about them dropping the PPC program are false. They will continue with the Sponsored Listings PPC program. Its actually doing very well for them as they indicated.

Here is what they had to say:

Like we did on Ask.com to improve the search experience, we are reducing the number of ads above our organic search results on the Ask.co.uk site. On Ask.co.uk, we are eliminating our Branded Response and the Answer Link products, showing only PPC listings as we do on Ask.com. Similar moves in the U.S. have resulted in an all-time high retention rate. As it does today, Ask.co.uk will continue to show Google Listings.

Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings PPC product is going very well in the U.S., and we are focused on continuing to grow AJSL here before we expand internationally. While we believe the reduction in ad products will be great for our users, it has impacted our direct sales force only in the United Kingdom. We believe this will make Ask.co.uk an even stronger platform for advertisers to reach customers.

I think the confusion is that they are dropping a few ad placements in the results for a better search experience, but not dropping the PPC program. Both are different issues.

Hope that clarifies some of the confusion.