MSN Search and Win Gives Prizes to Searchers

I would tend to vote for "lame and lazy." Kinda reminds me of All Advantage - remember that old "Get paid to surf" scheme from about 1999/2000?

Heck, A9 gives me incentives, but I still don't use it enough to ever qualify when I order something from Amazon.

The fact that the winning box goes where the ads normally go shows that they are realy incentivizing ad clicks.

I hope none of my clients ever end up featured as one of the lucky target phrases.

The fact that the winning box goes where the ads normally go shows that they are realy incentivizing ad clicks.

yeah IMO that seems a bit stupid for MSFT. it's insulting to advertisers.

All prizes have odds of at least 1:100,000

This is going to take a while to get free movie tickets

goes off to hire a programmer to make Prizebot (Beta)

that is the weakest incentive to use a search engine ever

"Lamest incentive Ever."

So, if it's so lame, then what would be YOUR idea? Do you have a better one? I applaud the effort.

Improve the SERPs?

Honestly, as strong as the M*crosoft marketing engine is, if they wanted to convert people to use their search engine, I'm sure they could do it...but yes, I agree: better SERPs would go a long way to help that.

sure I'd start with building a search engine then I'd move to promoting it.

this is a cart before the horse scenario

This is the CBS iWon model from 1997, not very innovative.. but it works.

What was the movie where someone entered a contest a whole bunch and won a lot of prizes? Real Genius? I can just imagine anonymous proxies across the net groaning under the weight of programmers gearing up to do a search and then grep for the magic phrase "You are an Instant Winner". Aaron, let me know if you get the free Netflix subscription. ;)

lol evil!
Everyone is now integrating the prize search into their favourite content generator/MSN scraper :)

I have not won anything, but I lost 10 minutes doing pointless searches.

Real Genius is a good movie, but a real genius would not use their clickbot program to win a $200 netflix subscription. You will make much more money using it for click fraud.

>So is this all just the lame and lazy marketing, or is incentivized search a natural progression, as Jeremy Zawodny suggested?

I'm starting to revise my earlier, shoot-from-the-hip negative reaction to this and agree with Jeremy Z., for both Y! and MSN. I think they need to just get customers in the door to at least try their respective search services for a couple of weeks. If incentives will do that fine. When I was a kid banks, S&L's used to give away free small appliances for opening up a new account and gas stations used to give away glasses and plates for filling up (and actually pumped the gas for you.) Those industries were real competitors and not cartels back then, so I figure it is good to see Y! and MSN really try to slug it out with Google any way they can.

IMO, Google is more vulnerable on search quality then they have been in 5 years so the time to strike is now, even if MSN is only partially ready for prime time.

You realize that fact you have know the plot to "Real Genius" dates you. ;)

Good lord that MSN search and win site is slow. People must be hammering it with the ol clickbots.

Do you wanna borrow my pajamas?