Microsoft® Office Live (http://www.officelive.com) today announced that it is adding Ask Sponsored Listings (http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com) to its adManager Beta search advertising service. adManager enables small businesses to purchase and manage search-based keyword advertising easily and affordably directly from the Microsoft Office Live platform. Ask Sponsored Listings joins the MSN® network and Live Search as distribution sources for Microsoft Office Live customers’ search ads.

Ask Sponsored Listings(ASL) is an automated, open-auction system that allows search marketers to purchase, manage and optimize pay-per-click and contextual advertising campaigns on the ASL publisher network, including Ask.com.

As more consumers are making purchase decisions online, search marketing has emerged as a $15.8 billion global industry, and experts expect it to grow to $44.5 billion over the next five years. Search is also the second most commonly used application on the Web, with 550 million searches daily in the United States, according to Piper Jaffray & Co.* Local search is also catching on as more businesses want to be able to target their ads to a specific region; in 2006, local search accounted for approximately 15 percent of total online ad spending.** adManager is heeding these trends by offering small businesses a solution to develop a national or locally targeted search-engine advertising campaign in no time that can be managed across multiple search engines.