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Creepy Ask.com Commercials Not Helping (IACI)

ask-commercial.jpgAsk.com's latest TV commercials -- weird people hanging limply on other people as they ask questions -- haven't won many fans. And they haven't helped IAC's (IACI) search engine's market share, which is down almost one-third year-over-year.

Below, we've embedded one of Ask's more recent spots, where a dead-looking woman drapes herself over a young lad. A similarly creepy ad, featuring a dead-looking guy, aired this past weekend, drawing jeers on Twitter:

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  • "Ask.com, please revamp your ad campaign before my nausea and repulsion cause me to do something rash to my TV. Ugh."
  • "...seriously, why are the Ask.com TV commercials ... so..... bad.......???"

The ads would be fine, of course, if they were helping Ask.com's business. But according to Hitwise, they're not: Ask.com garnered 3.15% of U.S. Web searches during the week ending Nov. 29, down from 3.61% of searches a month ago and 4.52% of searches a year ago. (That's a 30% market share drop in a year.)

Usual disclaimers apply: This is just one metric from one source. (We'll keep an eye out for comScore's November search stats.) But it's not good news for Ask.com.

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