Renee,

Thanks for sharing this article. It is definitely very interesting.

However, I have to say I am fairly disappointed at Microsoft's approach. Not very innovative in my opinion. It's like if I created a general shopping website with different links (all of them are affiliate links, of course) and just tell people, if you buy it through my link, I will give you a percentage back. It's been done before... many times. Not innovative at all.

As a PPC advertiser myself, I stopped using Microsoft adcenter, because I wasn't getting results. It's not as user-friendly as Yahoo or Google in my opinion. If their ad center is not generating a lot of revenue, maybe they can focus on improving it to meet the needs of advertisers.

Further, while people are incentivized by monetary discounts, I think that's the wrong way to promote a search engine... a search engine should be about delivering quality results, not discounts.

I have to say, however, that this may attract more PPC advertisers if Live stands out as a shopping search engine, i.e. it attracts shoppers (people who are ready to buy something online), not just information-seekers.

Very interesting article, Renee. Thanks again.

Sherif

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