Bribery, while useful, isn't always an effective means of obtaining a large user base, Microsoft has discovered.  Microsoft announced today that it will retire the Bing cashback program because not enough people stuck around after taking advantage of it.

The program did work in some respects, helping Microsoft establish relationships with a lot of different businesses.  A post on the Bing Search Blog even stated, "[W]e had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns . . ."

Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business Group at Microsoft, admitted, though, "But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for."

So the last day individuals will be able to earn cashback by shopping with Bing will be July 30th (at 9:00 PM PST, to be exact).  Then users will have one year to claim their cashback sums before the whole program is terminated.

Bargain hunters can't be expected to take this news well.  Still, Microsoft fans have reason to be pleased since Mehdi said the company will start to channel its energy (and money) into different and more effective approaches to attracting and retaining users.

A recent survey from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit, found that most businesses are still only experimenting with social media. With this in mind, it seems worth paying attention to how some big and successful brands use social media in their own strategies.

One company that is finding social media incredibly useful is Intuit, makers of popular financial software like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. Seth Greenberg, Director of National Media Buying and Digital Marketing for Intuit’s consumer group answered some of our questions about how effective the companies efforts are in social media.

Intuit actively participates on Twitter and Facebook daily, as well as YouTube, and some advertising with MySpace and LinkedIn. When asked if they focus on any networks the most, Greenberg says, "Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the focus because more than 50% of customers use it. Twitter offers a transparent, real-time engagement with customers and prospects on questions, issues or general comments they may have.  Through both networks we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."

We asked what ways the company participates. Intuit has employees all across the company that have a hand in the social media strategy, as it relates to their own roles. This covers everything from communications to marketing, and product people.

"TurboTax is very involved in social, as are other b/> [...]

Tue Mar 09, 2010 04:05 am

Yahoo's line of thinking with regards to the big Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising deal is that it will benefit both Microsoft and Yahoo's advertisers, as well as consumers and publishers.

It will benefit advertisers because it will increase search volume, with results from both Bing and Yahoo being taken into consideration. It will benefit consumers because by combining advertisers from both properties, there will be a greater pool to deliver sponsored results from, which Yahoo says will mean increased relevance. It will benefit Yahoo, Bing, and their publisher partners with increased liquidity, participation, and relevance. That is basically the sum of it, according to Yahoo Vice President of Search Advertising David Pann.

WebProNews recently sat down with Pann and discussed these things and how the deal will affect advertisers.

According to Pann, the migration across all international markets will occur over the next 24 months or so, but they will n/> [...]

Sat Mar 13, 2010 04:45 am

Bloggers and reporters are reviewing Ken Auletta's new book, "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It," in which the New Yorker writer notes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google co-founder Larry Page considered buying The New York Times. Evil alert!

I haven't read the book from Penguin Press yet, though I requested a copy today. The title alone sets us up for a treatment of an industry-changing company.

It looks from this interview on I Want Media that Auletta is painting Google as a company that is altering the course of media:

Google co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt told me that they had discussed buying the New York Times, but in the end decided that if they succeeded it would sabotage their identity as a neutral search engine. The reason they are interested in preserving the New York Times is that Google's search engine depends on good information, and the Times is the world's best newspaper.

If newspapers need any more ammunition for the idea that Google was trying to be a media conqueror, they need only look at that quote.

Schmidt and Brin know content is king, but for one frighteningly hazardous second they forgot that Google was a search engine first.

This would be quite the conflict of interest. Any evidence that Times articles would get higher placement on Google's search engine would cast the company in a most evil light.

In fact, the fact that Google's leaders even considered buying a venerable media company, while tempting when you bear the shoulders of giants rather than stand on them, /> [...]

Sat Nov 14, 2009 16:15 pm