Hitwise: Microsoft’s Pay for Traffic Working
October 6, 2008
Hitwise, an Experian company, reported on October 3, 2008, that “MSN Cashback [is] successfully attracting visitors. You can read this remarkable article and see the graph “proving” the success here. Hitwise wrote:
In looking specifically at MSN Cashback, we see an interesting trend where the share of visits to the Cashback section of MSN Live is increasing. Eleven weeks ago, MSN Cashback represented 3.75% of the traffic to Live.com and grew to 6.29% last week. This rise in Cashback’s traffic underscores the interest in the program, which is likely to be getting a boost from shoppers looking to save money and stretch their budgets given the current economic climate.
The only challenge in “pay for users” is that users form a habit to get paid, not to search in my opinion. The for fee commercial services have used a variant of this with college students. Commercial online seems free. When the lads and lasses break into the real world, it’s free online services first and foremost. Maybe Microsoft has cracked the code? I doubt it, though.
The key question is, “Why does a vendor have to pay a person to use a service?” Answer: the other vendor–in this case the GOOG–has about 70 percent market share of US search with its share clicking up 0.01 or 0.02 each month. Users choose the GOOG and some of them go for the pay deal as well. The big number is the 70 percent share obtained without paying, answering email, or being particular helpful.
Hitwise is excited, but I am not. Are you?
Stephen Arnold, October 6, 2008
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