14 DAY TRIAL // The Ask.com team has decided to give itself a boost and, at the same time, move closer to the hearts of the users who conduct online searches. The company has just announced a multi-annual partnership with Photobucket, the famous photo and video-sharing website. For starters, an Ask.com search box will be "prominently" displayed on Photobucket's main page. Moreover, sponsored listings and display advertising will be syndicated to Photobucket.
The millions of users of the image-hosting website will have the opportunity of performing searches without even leaving the window. "Photobucket has one of the largest online audiences, and now Ask.com provides these consumers with the answers to the questions they ask every day," said Andrew Moers, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Ask.com Partner Network. He also added that this was only one step in the more extensive process of partnering with as many online companies as possible, in order to expand the popularity of Ask.com.
"Photobucket users view, store and share billions of images each month and Ask.com will serve as a great resource in helping those users find specific content quickly and efficiently," stated Alex Welch, President of Photobucket, explaining what the actual advantages of the users will be.
Both companies are popular, but not popular enough to be leaders in their market segment. Ask.com is in the top 5 search engines chart, but with only 4.5% of the market, as a study performed by ComScore revealed. At the same time, Photobucket is seen as the smaller brother of Flickr, although they are more like stepbrothers than anything. An agreement between Ask.com and Photobucket could lead to a better positioning for both companies on the respective market. Whichever of the two will benefit more from said agreement is yet to be seen. At any rate, Ask.com's chances of getting closer or attaining Google's coverage are quite small.