Ask.com recently dropped the Jeeves from its name along with its butler icon. The name change along with a multi-million dollar ad campaign are part of a brand-building effort designed to help it build more marketshare. From the WSJ…

Ask handled only 5.5% of U.S. search queries in December, compared with Google’s 48.8%, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. That places Ask fifth in searches, also behind Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

No word in the WSJ article on the specifics of how much they will be spending on the ad campaign other than it is in the “multi-million dollars”. Ask.com was purchased by Barry Dillar’s IAC/InterActiveCorp last summer for $1.85 billion

Here’s the latest Alexa graphs for Ask.com.

It will be interesting to see if they can buy marketshare.