Is Microsoft Onto a Winner with CashBack?

It seems that the CashBack offer that Microsoft started back in June might be a triumph if the latest statistics from Comscore are anything to go by.

For those of you who don't know about Microsoft Live CashBack, it is a new search advertising strategy from Microsoft which aims to pay searchers who use the search engine to find and buy products from participating retailers. It shifts search advertising from cost-per-click (CPC) to cost-per-action (CPA) and gives a lot of the revenue back to users.

Comscore have released statistics showing a 15% increase in search volume in June for Microsoft compared to May 2008.

Microsoft now holds 9.2% of the US search market, still a long way behind Google which decreased by .3% in June to commands 61.5% of the market. However, this should be seen as good news for Microsoft, any initiative that takes away market share from Google (albeit very small) is a positive and I think they might be onto a winner with CashBack.

Posted by Courtney Mills at 12:39 AM GMT