Hoping to increase search engine market share, IAC will today break a branding campaign for Ask.com that will air on national TV, including NBC's "Today" show and "Saturday Night Live, reports MediaPost. The campaign was created by ad agency Berlin Cameron, and OMD handled the media buy. The campaign comes three months after Ask rebranded itself without Jeeves, the butler mascot, in an effort that involved a TV campaign created by TBWA/Chiat/Day.

The new spots feature Apostolos Gerasoulis, EVP of search technology at Ask.com and founder of Teoma Technologies, a search company that Ask acquired in 2001. ClickZ writes that Gerasoulis, a former professor at Rutgers University, was asked to use Ask.com to find out about pop culture references, such as hip-hop culture, and then to explain what he found.

In one spot, Gerasoulis shows that a search for "pimped out cars" can lead to useful information about custom rims and also find sites that use related terms such as "tight" or "phat." "Search engines understand text. Ask.com understands concepts," he says in a Greek accent. "Pimped out cars are related; tight cars are related. Ask.com is a 'pimped out search engine'; it is very tight."

The Ask Network accounted for 5.9 percent of online searches in March, whereas Google had 42.7 percent and Yahoo 28 percent, according to comScore Networks.