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People will see a nine-figure advertising campaign emerge from IAC as they spend $100 million of Barry Diller's money to try and make Ask.com a search habit on the Internet

Ask Ads Attack Algorithm Apathy

Ask has been able to maintain its search market share fourth-place position ahead of AOL, but the leading trio of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft has been a much more difficult group to chase. The search engine will embrace the maxim of spending money to make money, according to IAC's top executive:

"We have a number of ways to tell people about Ask, its tools, and why it should be used (and) why you should make a change from Google," IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

"We'll spend this year probably, on media, close to a hundred million dollars to promote Ask," he said.

Recent promotional efforts from Ask have included their Information Revolution faux-anarchy campaign in Britain, and a selection of odd billboards in the U.S.

They will buy more than billboards with the next cash infusion into the marketing department. Television and other media should see Ask promotional efforts making their way from the creative agencies to their distribution networks.

We're fans of Ask's technology and services; seeing them gain more market share can only benefit Internet users. But the Google habit people have learned over the past several years will be very tough to break, even with $100 million in advertising behind Ask.