Ask Jeeves Inc. stopped selling banner ads on Jan. 1 to focus on targeted text-based ads.

The Emeryville, CA search engine banned the banners to focus on its other types of advertising — Branded Response and Premier Listings. Both appear among the text responses to a keyword search.

The move is part of a strategy by Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com) to head toward advertising exclusively targeted to keyword searches.

Besides, banners weren't delivering. Clickthrough rates had declined to 0.6%. The industry average is about 0.3%.

Branded Response, which places an advertiser's URL in the first group of responses to a keyword search so the user can click right to that site, has given clickthrough rates of up to 25%, according to company spokeswoman Carrie Bishop. On average, clickthroughs are between 3% and 5%.

Premier Listings appear a bit further down the page under a heading that says, “You may find this featured sponsor helpful.” Clickthrough rates for this area weren't available.

“We don't see a negative impact moving forward because without the banner, there's less competition for the user's attention on the site,” says Bishop.

Both Branded Response and Premier Listings have been used on Ask Jeeves for the last 18 months. Branded Response is priced on a CPM basis, at $75 for content keywords and $35 for content category.

Premier Listings are sold on a cost-per-click basis. Each deal is negotiated separately, Bishop says.

Ask Jeeves began removing its non-targeted banners and pop-ups in October. The targeted banners were completely discontinued by the end of December.

All advertisers have stayed on, Bishop said.

Google, the leading search engine, has no banners. Ask Jeeves is ranked as the No. 5 search engine by Nielsen/NetRatings.

Banner ads delivered about 5% of overall revenue for Ask Jeeves last year, according to Bishop. The company reported revenue of $17.8 million for the third quarter of 2002 and a net loss of $3.4 million. It expects a profit of $1 million for the fourth quarter.