What now Jeeves?

Originally published on EuropeMedia.net, 19/11/2001.

Online advertising sales have undoubtedly been affected by the events of September the 11th. Whilst analysts argue about the extent to which the terrorist attacks accelerated a process of economic slow down that had already begun, one thing is clear: all the well known search engines rely on advertising models of some form as a major source of income.

In the first of a series of features, Duncan Parry talks to Nick Mason-Pearson of Ask Jeeves UK about the effects of the downturn in online advertising and their future plans.

To begin, has Ask Jeeves experienced a decrease in advertising revenue?

Ask Jeeves: Yes, we have experienced a squeeze, as money is simply not being made available for ad budgets while advertisers keep check on costs.

But we are not feeling it as badly as many media owners because we provide 'mindset targeting' for our advertisers, which allows them to reach an audience that is receptive to specific sales messages. By enabling users to ask a question, we let them express themselves and be more specific about what they are looking for.

This achieves two things: first, they find what they are looking for more quickly and accurately; second, by expressing themselves they give clues to advertisers about whether they are buying or browsing. This triggers ads on keywords in the questions and other inputs, so we are able to deliver higher than average click-through rates to many advertisers.

Jeeves, how are your future plans affected by the current economic situation?

Ask Jeeves: Naturally we have had to adjust our product development plans to match the changing economic environment and demands from users as well as advertisers. That is not to say that we have scrapped plans, we have simply delayed them. What is interesting, though, is that the decline in advertising spending has also led us to explore new areas of revenue generation and product development that perhaps we would have passed up if the market had been more buoyant; so in some ways good comes out of bad.

Many websites now offer different size advertising formats that are more interactive than traditional banner advertisements. What does Ask Jeeves offer advertisers?

Ask Jeeves: We have already introduced new formats after testing them in terms of technology and user-experience. In addition to regular banners and buttons, we offer advertisers pop-ups, skyscrapers, DHTML and rich media executions of all of these.

We also offer our own creative treatments, such as dynamic response anchor tenancies (DRATs) and expandable DRATs. These are like banners but they appear within the text of a list of relevant answers returned back, a bit like an advertorial. A DRAT carries the ability for advertisers to put question boxes or drop-down menus into their message, making them more interactive. E-DRATs literally expand when you click on them, allowing the advertiser to increase their message content.

Ask Jeeves boasts a natural language search service as its main feature. Does Ask have plans to broaden its search services to compete with those offered by its competitors, such as searches for photos, or are you concentrating on web pages alone?

Ask Jeeves: The way Ask Jeeves' technology works currently is perfect for people looking for a 'richer' answer to their question, so we provide related answers that often pre-empt their next question. So a request for cheap flights to Paris will not just return the relevant sites for budget economy flights, but also links to accommodation sites, currency converter, and things to do and see.

Providing a 'deep search' could be a relevant next step and is something we have the option to do through the recent acquisition by Ask Jeeves, Inc. of Teoma, the powerful search company that has technology which goes steps beyond other competitors. While we plan how to integrate the Teoma technology, our strategy remains to provide users with what they demand and if deep search for pictures, graphics, video images and word or excel documents is a priority for them, then it is something we will provide.

WAP hasn't proved to be "killer app" for the mobile internet some predicted, with only a small number of UK WAP users compared to early predictions. What are Ask Jeeves UK's future plans for the next generation of mobile internet services?

Ask Jeeves: New platforms such as IDTV, PDAs and mobile were certainly being investigated thoroughly in the early days of the dotcom ascent and we now deliver Ask Jeeves UK on ITV Digital. Since those heady days, the uptake of WAP has certainly proved disappointing, largely due to the lack of available content and poor user experience. We believe that WAP is all but gone now and was simply a stepping stone to 2.5G and 3G.

If our users tell us they want the Jeeves experience, either via voice or the 3x2 screen on their next generation phone, then we will develop our product accordingly. When there is content to search for via this new generation of access technology, then we'll be there to find it.

Europemedia extends sincere thanks to Mr. Mason-Pearson for the interview.