MSN Adcenter Trying to be Viral

Probably the same reason for the limited open sign up periods and the like as well.

how people loved being invited "exclusively" to Google services but not MSN. How your brand is perceived makes so much difference.

Ah well I know of a few who would like to test it so I'm happy to hand em out.

When I saw the MSN invitation, I immediately thought they were trying to create buzz in the same way that Google has done with their limited invitations to Gmail, Orkut, Page Creator, etc.

Of course, as several folks have already pointed out, it's one thing to create buzz for a free product, it's quite another to create buzz for a service you are selling.

I wrote a post on my blog about this. Here's the relevant part:

First of all, Gmail is a free email account. Other than being cooler than Yahoo at the moment, it isn't something that isn't readily available elsewhere online. MSN AdCenter, however, is a limited beta of high quality online clicks. The more people that sign up for AdCenter, the more competition for clicks, the higher advertisers must pay, and the lower the ROI for existing advertisers.

Existing advertisers no doubt comprehend this fact (especially since the margins right now are astronomically higher than those on Google or Overture). So there's actually a strong disincentive to 'share' MSN with other advertisers. I suppose you could give an invitation to someone you know in a totally different vertical, but for the most part, the other folks you know that are actively engaged in online marketing are probably your competitors. Just as you wouldn't tell a competitor about a secret keyword you've discovered that's driving thousands of dollars of business to your company, you're unlikely to send a friendly email inviting your rivals to participate on a successful network.

Of course, the flipside of this could also occur. If you're having bad luck on MSN - and you're a malicious person - perhaps you'd actually want to invite some of your less-likeable competitors onto MSN, just to see them burn through a lot of cash. Either way, if you assume that advertisers of a feather flock together, it seems unlikely that there would be a lot of benevolent sharing of invitations.

The second difference between MSN AdCenter and Gmail is that MSN AdCenter costs money and Gmail is free. It was nice (albeit a little spammy) to get an invitation in the early Gmail days inviting me to try out Google's latest cool product. But getting an invitation from someone inviting me to sign up to buy advertising online? That's a little strange. I can just imagine the boilerplate email MSN has composed: "Hi [Insert Name Here], I just spent $5000 on MSN AdCenter. You should too! Click here to provide your credit card information and get started today!"

I think there are two things going on here...

1. People loved Google's Gmail invites because they had something that was newsworthy. The upgrade in disk space alone was a huge upgrade over what competitors were offering.

2. People don't get excited to be invited to spend money - they get excited to be given the opportunity to get something for free or to make money. I promise you that if this were a publisher program, there would be a lot more buzz about it then there is right now.

If anyone asks, I'll hand out my invites, but I don't foresee a huge rush on this.

MSN traffic right now is dirt cheap and relatively plentiful, particularly in the competitive niche I work in (paying about a third of what I do on Google without even trying). So I'm happy to encourage others to jump into MSN right now. If you've got friends and associates not signed up with MSN, send them an invite, share the love.

People have been dying to get into AdCenter - cheap traffic and conversions (at least from people I've intereacted with) have been great.

If that's not an opportunity I don't know what is...

I don't get the comparison to Gmail at all. How much $ has your gmail account made you this week?

Despite what some of you think, there are people out there who want these invitations. I asked my mailing list last night got over 30 requests for them and was only able to fulfill 15 of them (someone gave me 5 spares to hand out).

wheel said:

MSN traffic right now is dirt cheap and relatively plentiful, particularly in the competitive niche I work in (paying about a third of what I do on Google without even trying).

That is exactly why I'm not going to go to any great lengths to give these out. If a friend asks me that's one thing, but I'm not going out of my way to add advertisers that I'll have to bid against...

NB: 10 MSN invites for sale, with a signed agreement not to bid on automotive, credit, or industry software terms. ;-)

Maybe the MSN guys might have forgotten to mention early birds discount offer.