Friday, April 3, 2009
Maybe Lauren’s Not Cool Enough to Be a Google User, Either
With Microsoft’s February share of the search market weighing in at a paltry 8.2 percent and declining, the company is going to extraordinary lengths to reverse the public’s indifference to its search offering. It tried loyalty programs. It tried rewards programs. Now, as it prepares to rebrand its search engine under a new name–Kumo–it’s turning to a more proven method: an $80 million to $100 million advertising campaign.
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback–“The Search That Pays You Back!”–must have had at least some short-term positive effect on Microsoft’s search business because the company is augmenting it with another rewards program. Now, in addition to receiving Cashback rebates on certain purchases of products found through Microsoft’s live.com Web search, users can win prizes as well.
