UK-based advertising platform Pixsta has launched with the bold claim that it can challenge Google's dominance of the web search market.

Pixsta claims to enable full image-to-image search based on contextual image retrieval techniques.

This is one step up from the text-to-text or text-to-image capabilities of search engines currently in widespread use, according to the company.

Pixsta has also developed a revenue-generating advertising network for the online fashion retail market.

The firm claims to have live deployments in place with media partners including Handbag.com, Elle UK, the News of The World's Fabulous magazine, Monsoon, Oasis and Dorothy Perkins.

Pixsta explained that its "advertising ecosystem" is similar to Google's AdWords, but is based wholly on images rather than text.

Users are able to click on an image of an item of clothing, shoes or jewellery, for example, to return further images of items that are similar in colour, shape or texture.

Customer acquisition costs for the advertiser are lowered, according to Pixsta, which is claiming lead-to-customer success rates in excess of six per cent.

The value of a Pixsta AdImage click is therefore considerably higher than an AdWords click, the firm said.

Pixsta also said that its AdImage platform is sufficiently sophisticated to enable its use in facial recognition applications, or as a standalone image search engine.