Comments on: microsoft’s 2006 counteroffensive on google taking shape http://www.cheezhead.com/2005/12/12/microsofts-2006-counteroffensive-on-google-taking-shape/ Insight and opinion from the world of employment. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:01:22 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Steven Rothberg http://www.cheezhead.com/2005/12/12/microsofts-2006-counteroffensive-on-google-taking-shape/comment-page-1/#comment-398 Steven Rothberg Thu, 15 Dec 2005 03:19:55 +0000 http://www.cheezhead.com/2005/12/12/microsofts-2006-counteroffensive-on-google-taking-shape/#comment-398 While I admire the creative thinking by Mr. Gates, I question how many advertisers are going to be willing to pay Microsoft the same rate for its incentivized links as they pay to Google for unincentivized links. We drive a tremendous amount of qualified leads to our site from our affiliate program at Commission Junction http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/affiliateinfo.php . But we automatically refuse to approve any site that provides any type of incentive to its visitors to respond to ads because the quality of those leads if markedly worse than the quality of leads from visitors which did not receive an incentive. In the old days of the web, traffic was thought to be king. Whichever site had the most eyeballs won. That's why BlueMountain, a cheesy (no relationship to the owner of this blog, by the way) web site that specialized in on-line greeting cards was sold to Excite for $800 million. No revenues? No problem! We've got lots of visitors. In the end, even the dot com owners had to admit that profits did matter, and any sales person will tell you that they make far more money selling to qualified leads than they do in trying to sell to unqualified leads. Incentivized leads, which Mr. Gates seems to be considering, fall squarely into the second group. While I admire the creative thinking by Mr. Gates, I question how many advertisers are going to be willing to pay Microsoft the same rate for its incentivized links as they pay to Google for unincentivized links.

We drive a tremendous amount of qualified leads to our site from our affiliate program at Commission Junction http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/affiliateinfo.php . But we automatically refuse to approve any site that provides any type of incentive to its visitors to respond to ads because the quality of those leads if markedly worse than the quality of leads from visitors which did not receive an incentive.

In the old days of the web, traffic was thought to be king. Whichever site had the most eyeballs won. That’s why BlueMountain, a cheesy (no relationship to the owner of this blog, by the way) web site that specialized in on-line greeting cards was sold to Excite for $800 million. No revenues? No problem! We’ve got lots of visitors. In the end, even the dot com owners had to admit that profits did matter, and any sales person will tell you that they make far more money selling to qualified leads than they do in trying to sell to unqualified leads. Incentivized leads, which Mr. Gates seems to be considering, fall squarely into the second group.

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