MSN Search plan ill-advised

December 15, 2005
by Richard Gregory

Last week at a conference in India, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft plans to reward – with money, free content, or software – the searchers who use MSN Search. So far, the response to Microsoft’s plan has been lukewarm at best – with good reason.

In all of the reactions to the plan, there’s one thing I haven’t seen mentioned: This model of rewarding users is exactly the same one that Miva started out with (back when it was known as Espotting, of course). It didn’t work for Espotting and it won’t work for MSN – if they end up adopting it at all, now.

In order to yield the best possible results, the rewards in search must lie at the right end of the value chain – with advertisers (who, after all, have the money), not users. Keep the incentive genuine and you’ll keep the ROI high. If anything is the name of the game, high ROI is it. It’s in no one’s interests to go down any other road.