Live Search CashBack

By Tommy Leung on 05/22/2008 in Marketing

There were flutterings yesterday about Microsoft’s new search initiative to give people money for completing transactions with Live Search. Bill Gates has officially announced the plan at Microsoft Advance ’08.

Microsoft’s new business model for search, coined Live Search CashBack, will basically give the consumer the fee that the advertiser would have paid Microsoft in a cost-per-action model. Under this plan, Microsoft is not going to make any money on the advertising. One would have to conclude that this is predominantly a strategy to steal users away from Google and Yahoo!

Gates proclaimed that “we can look back and say search started to get a fair bit more competitive and we can look back to this announcement.” I welcome more competition in search. As a business, Google has impressed me at every turn and I am curious to know how Google will combat this. No one knows how successful this model may or may not be but as I mentioned previously, I will certainly try it out.

Shaken, not Stirred

By Tommy Leung on 05/22/2008 in Life

Science has found that vodka martinis–shaken, not stirred–has the ability to deactivate hydrogen peroxide – a substance used to bleach hair or disinfect scrapes, and a potent source of the free radicals linked to aging and disease. Can’t wait to ask for my next martini in classic James Bond style.

Congresswoman in Foreclosure

By Tommy Leung on 05/21/2008 in Politics

It appears that California Representative Laura Richardson’s Sacramento home had slipped into foreclosure. She had bought it with no money down. I suspect there will be more of these to come. Of course, she denies that it is in foreclosure and says that she has negotiated with the bank. That might be so but it still appears she is having difficulty meeting the mortgage payments.

Marketing and the Internet

By Tommy Leung on 05/21/2008 in Marketing

The majority of marketers have yet to really grasp the ideas of online marketing. It isn’t difficult to see why. Online marketing is still very much a new frontier. The majority of marketing executives didn’t learn about online marketing in college and may not even be that adept online. Universities are barely scratching the surface of online marketing today. Avinash Kaushik, Google’s “analytics evangelist”, says “so many websites ‘suck’ today is because of the hippo — as in the ‘highest paid person’s opinion.’”

Kaushik wants marketers to think more about the “why.” He also advises conversing with consumers to determine what we need to fix. He also goes to talk about Google’s Analytics tools which I am finding more and more useful by the day. Google wants “to be the company that really lives the spirit of accountable advertising.” Sounds good to me.

Search and Get Cash

By Tommy Leung on 05/21/2008 in Marketing

That is Microsoft’s new search initiative in order to gain more market share. The plan is to have consumers search for products using Live search and then complete a transaction. Microsoft will give the consumer back a percentage of the transaction as a reward for using Live search. So instead of spending billions to buy Yahoo! and grow market share, Microsoft looks like it will just give the money to us–I like that.

At this point I am likely to use this Live search at least once because of this cash-back program. I’m sure the savings are not going to be that significant but if Microsoft wants to pay me to use their products, why not? I wonder what Google intends to do about this, if anything. Competition is great.

The Clinton Deficit

By Tommy Leung on 05/21/2008 in Politics

That’s Hillary Clinton–not that Bill really erased any deficits either. Clinton’s Presidential campaign is now more than 20 million dollars in the red. Obama, on the other had, is flush with all kinds of money as he flexes his money raising muscles. Ken Wheaton at Ad Age comically offered Obama unsolicited ad advice.

I did not support Clinton’s campaign since the beginning and with the last two Democrats fighting it out, this news has given me no greater confidence in her. If she can’t even manage the finances of her little campaign, how is she going to keep the country out of debt? The last thing we need is more of it.

Inflation: The Worst Tax

By Tommy Leung on 05/21/2008 in Politics

I had recently read a news article about a bill in the Senate that is designed to solve the root of the current housing crisis: foreclosures. My initial commentary on that article was not flattering to Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby. The fact of the matter is that these two gentlemen are missing the real root of the housing problem: inflation.

The value of real estate had skyrocketed in the years after the Tech Bubble burst. What Alan Greenspan did at that time was cut interest rates to ridiculously low levels in order to avoid a “recession.” I would argue that we didn’t avoid the recession, we just delayed it. The act of cutting interest rates is the same as printing new money. When Greenspan cut rates after the tech bubble, this new inflation found its way into real estate and ignited a boom in real estate like we had never seen before.

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