• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 10, 2009

Ask.com is trying to impress advertisers by better protecting content and scoring its paid search clicks using Anchor Intelligence's ClearMark software. The IAC/InterActiveCorp company hopes to improve traffic quality for brands.

ClearMark, Anchor's traffic scoring system, classifies traffic quality and ad events. It provides a score that represents the quality of the traffic and the value of each click. Ask.com now has better information about each ad event to better target advertising to people who use the engine to search the Web.

Advertising is a key element of Ask.com's business. Providing the best-quality ads means connecting brands with consumers through the most relevant ads. "It boils down to quality, performance and value," said Nicholas Graham, VP of communications at Ask.com.

The deal also benefits advertisers, from mom-and-pop shops to larger companies similar to eBay, according to Richard Sim, VP of product management and marketing, who likened the ClearMark system to a FICO credit score for clicks, as well as other scoring systems such as Quality of Service (QoS) for the telecom industry, VeriSign and TRUSTe for ecommerce, Arbitron for radio and Nielsen for television.

Advertisers should feel confident that the benefits gained through ClearMark include higher-quality scores traffic based on the likelihood that clicks are not fraudulent or illegitimate, and that they are likely to convert. Proprietary algorithms monitor the Web software.

The ClearMark integration works through Weblogs, a record of each click event such as the time the click happened, Internet protocol (IP) address and the ad served. The product is available in the U.S. and Europe.

There may be other opportunities between Anchor and Ask.com, but the search engine continues to learn how to walk before it can run, Graham said.

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