Photobucket signs Ask.com search marketing deal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - IAC/InterActiveCorp's search engine unit Ask.com said on Thursday struck a deal that allows its search box to be displayed across online photo and video site Photobucket.com.

Under the terms of the multi-year deal, Ask.com's display advertising and paid search ads, which are displayed based on search terms entered by the user, will also be displayed on Photobucket's site when a customer uses the Ask search box.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Photobucket, which is owned by News Corp, is the world's largest photo sharing site with more than 44 million users. It came to prominence as the photo-sharing application of choice for users of popular social networking site MySpace, also owned by News Corp. MySpace has more than 110 million users.

The deal will be a boost for Ask, which has small fraction of the online search market when compared with market leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

Google signed a similar search marketing agreement with MySpace in 2006 for $900 million but Google executives said in February that it has struggled to sell ads on social network sites.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney)