Introducing ASL Contextual Advertising It's no longer a rumor and definitely not a beta launch. Today's announcement of the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product is the real deal. First came Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) 1.0 in August, 2005. Next came ASL 2.0 in October, 2006. Now comes the next innovative product offering with the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product launching in less than four weeks. How is this product different from our competitors, you ask? Three important reasons, each one a paradigm shift: * It gives publishers more control over yield and relevancy * It gives publishers more creative ad unit opportunities * It allows both advertisers and publishers more control over where and what ads are displayed We'll be working with publishers to customize their implementations with some of the following options: * New customized relevancy thresholds for publishers * Innovative yield management thresholds that allow publishers to optimize their monetization efforts You won't find the standard white background with text ads. Our hybrid text + graphical contextual units will offer a fresh new look to performance based contextual advertising. Back to the labs for us. Stay tuned for more new product updates from the Search Marketing product team.
Great find betaisbetta - this came out 6 days ago, but you are the first to report it here, I believe. <edit>I'm an idiot - April 25 - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=310491</edit> Here is the link - http://blog.ask.com/2007/04/introducing_asl.html "no standard white background" I hope the thick "2-rounded-corners" border is not required - borders reduce CTR. The ad example on the right overlays the "Recent Posts" column on the right hand side of my Firefox browser. My screen is not wide enough (13 inches). The designer probably has a giant monitor. I limit my pages to 936 pixels wide, for this reason. In Firefox, Explorer, and Opera, the example ad covers the "Recent Posts" column. In Safari, the "Recent Posts" column covers the example ad. ASK needs to do some usability studies here. If you are telling everyone, "Look at our new ads", you really want to display them properly.
So do you have an ETA when you are going to open this up to publishers and/or (hint, hint!) are you accepting Beta testers?
Is this for website publishers, to display ASL ads on their sites? From looking at Ask.com, it appears similar to Google's AdWords and Yahoo's Sponsored Listings areas.
ETA = "The week of" May 21 I can't find any details about languages, countries, minimum requirements, approvals or sign-ups. So, I guess that - ADVERTISERS = Google Adwords = Yahoo YSM = Ask ASL, and PUBLISHERS = Google Adsense = Yahoo YPN = Ask ASL Contextual Product? (I don't think that ASL Contextual Product has a real name yet, which is what should really come first - what do we call it? ASL Contextual Product is too long and clunky.)