With the launch of its ASL 2.0, Ask.com has improved its sponsored-listings management tools and increased premium inventory available to search advertisers.

Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) has a revamped dashboard and bulk management tools (for up to 65,000 keywords), and IAC's Ask is making available an application programming interface (API) to advertisers and agencies to simplify management of ASL, ClickZ writes, offering more details of Ask's revamp.

ASL is now also offering daily instead of monthly budgeting tools and hourly performance data. Do-it-yourself advertisers can also now define the amount and frequency of charges to their credit cards.

Unlimited access to Ask's API is available at no cost, and reportedly 100 or so partners are developing tools, the first among which offer integrated campaign and bid management for paid search campaigns on Ask, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.