As Ask.com strives to gain a greater share of the paid search advertising market, the company has a major update of its advertising platform scheduled for early October.

The aim of the update is to improve campaign management functionality for advertisers. According to MediaPost, the enhancements will provide users with greater control over daily search budgets, offer real-time billable data, more reporting tools and the ability to manage campaigns from desktop applications.

Considering the efforts that Google and Yahoo! are putting into their advertising programs such as AdWords and the Yahoo! Publisher Network, this is a timely enhancement by the team at Ask.

Currently Ask.com uses a combination of their pay-per-click advertising and Google Adwords ads across the network. They are giving increased prominence to their own listings now with the top 3 spots dedicated to Ask.com advertisers. The advertising under their organic listings is given to Google ads.

IAC, the company that acquired the Ask.com search service, initially set out to control all paid advertising through the Ask.com own pay-per-click platform, but it appears in the short term, they will continue to outsource some of the advertising to the likes of Google. IAC Chairman, Barry Diller, stated that while outsourcing was still likely over the coming years, they might consider Yahoo! or MSN over Google once the initial contract expires.

While Ask’s market share is significantly lower than Google, Yahoo! and MSN, their platform development initiatives will be vital if they expect to reach their market share goals.

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