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Microsoft To Pay People To Search

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-some-of-our-extra-money dept.

kolicha writes "After the failed Yahoo bid, Microsoft is going to try a new approach to gain market share on their rivals Google. Sponsored links will be pay per purchase rather than pay per click, and search users will be offered 'cash back' on their purchases."

2 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Following a trend by transporter_ii · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sell xboxes at a loss, pay people to search; the next thing you know, they will be paying vendors to put a stripped down version of XP onto mini-notebooks. In Google's case, they could afford to fork over some money to searchers, too. But Linux couldn't compete if it had to pay the vendors. So that's how MS competes with free and/or better stuff, buy them off.

    --
    Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
  2. Most of you aren't really getting the point. by BlueStile · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Out of all the searches that occur, a small handful are the true moneymakers. When you search Google for "British prime ministers" the resulting ads are not very profitable to them. In fact, some searches are so unprofitable and clearly just information seeking, that Google will not even display ads at all.

    The important searches are things like "Best Digital Camera," "Kelly Blue Book BMW 325i," "The Da Vinci Code," and so on. These are searches that are very likely to result in a sale.

    What MSFT is doing doesn't seem that innovative because it's so obvious - but no one is doing it.

    Think of club promotors on sidewalks in NYC or Vegas or whatever. Typical entry is let's say cover of $10. But if you take a stupid little card from someone advertising the club, maybe that gets you free entry. Why? No reason, you aren't special, just you happened to pick up the advertisement. The club is paying the promotor to offer you a discount, so that you eventually buy the real product (drinks at the club, or whatnot).

    So if the marginal profit on a $400 digital camera is about (total guess) $150 bucks, and MSFT only demands the advertiser pay a cost per action, then that's $150 dollars of value that can be shared by a) Sony/Canon/whoever, b) Microsoft, and c) the USER!

    The point here is that it doesn't even matter if Google offers better search now! Going forward, I'll probably product search/research on Google, but go over to Microsoft to make the all-important final decision (because it's plainly the rational decision - my product WILL be cheaper)!

    If people pay attention, instead of throwing it out the window, this could be a gamechanger - it isn't the same as BigWallet, which essentially just shared the already offered referral deals with you (half a percent of the sale, usually). This could be a significant deal for everyone involved. Cost per action payment is the key.