AskJeeves Launches Paid Search Placements

Ok, well that happened sooner than we expected! AJ has just launched their sponsored listings program to compete with Google Adwords.

In the short term, I expect they’ll continue to use Google, until they build up enough advertisers, but I expect they will not renew their contract with Google in the long term.

My opinion: This is not a clever move. All the savvy marketers out there know that AJ actually reduces the value of Google traffic and lowers prices due to poor converting traffic. By going solo, this will expose the weakness in their traffic quality and they will now make less money on direct advertisers than they would have by piggy-backing on Google’s 200,000 advertisers and getting a high revenue share from Google. But that’s just my opinion…

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