MAM
Ask Jeeves goes banner free this year
CALIFORNIA: Here is a piece of news that gives a new perspective to the business of advertising on the web. Ask Jeeves Web Properties, a division of Ask Jeeves has announced the removal of all banner advertisements from Ask Jeeves (Ask.com), the Web’s second most popular search engine. An official release informs that this move reflects the company’s continuing commitment to delivering a highly targeted environment for its clients and a user-friendly search experience for consumers. Ask Jeeves also recently eliminated interstitials, commonly known as pop-up advertisements, from its suite of advertising products.
The company says that it is focussed on creating a more satisfying search experience for both users and advertisers. This year Ask Jeeves will focus on its core offerings including Branded Response and Premier Listings. These advertising units provide marketers a way to deliver their branding and text-based advertising to consumers within a relevant search environment. Branded Response helps marketers reach a highly targeted audience on Ask Jeeves’ results page while generating brand awareness through use of graphics and images. This unit is unique to Ask Jeeves and enjoys click-rates as high as 25 per cent. Premier Listings are keyword targeted, text-based advertising units that appear under the heading “featured sponsor” at the top of Ask Jeeves’ results page.
The company maintains that search marketing remains a powerful way to brand products and services online. The key for search engine marketers is to employ tools that add context and depth to a consumer’s search.
Ask Jeeves claims to be a leading provider of intuitive, intelligent question answering technologies and services. Ask Jeeves’ solutions enable companies to convert online shoppers to buyers, reduce support costs, understand customer preferences and improve customer retention. Ask Jeeves also syndicates its solutions to portals, infomediaries, and content and destination sites to help companies increase e-commerce and advertising revenue.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
