Microsoft axing Bing cashback on July 30

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Microsoft announced today that it would close Bing cashback this summer. The company said it originally launched cashback to help advertisers reach customers with compelling offers that, in theory, would provide a fresh shopping experience and attract a "bunch of new users" to Bing. Unfortunately, things didn't exactly pan out as Redmond expected and it's filing the soon-to-be-dead service under "test-and-learn."

Although the company accumulated over a thousand merchant partners who experienced "great" return on investment, cashback simply didn't live up to Microsoft's hopes. "After a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for," the company said in a farewell post today.

Microsoft said it plans to recycle the experience gained from cashback by introducing new programs for both users and advertisers. The official closure is on July 30 at 9PM PST, but you'll still have a year to redeem any cashback you've earned. The company will also provide a year of customer support to "ensure a smooth transition."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/39197-microsoft-axing-bing-cashback-on-july-30.html

 

[fwilliams]

After a couple more years of trying hopefully they will realize bing did not have broad adoption and bid it farewell.

 

[Guest]

Bing doesn' need to have the largest market share to be successful, I welcome CHOICE,
I made it my new default search engine because I like how it organizes news and pr0n, especially the video clips and when you can hover over it, plays a few seconds to preview. I'm sure Google is gonna steal that idea sooner or later.

 

[Guest]

I think it would have had vastly more success if there had been a better way to discover it. I spend quite a bit online, and think of myself relatively in the know, and I just recently discovered Bing Cashback. A decent add campaign would help immensely, as there's really no reason not to use it (even if you Google first, then check to see if it's available on Bing CB ).

 

[TomSEA]

I scored big-time on Bing cashback when I bought my 46" HDTV. But since then, I've never seen anything else (compared to Google shopping searches) that made me want to pull the trigger on a Bing search purchase.

 

[fwilliams]

Actually, Bing does need a big market share or Microsoft will just be throwing money at it for maintenance. If it does not have a big market share advertisers will not use it.

 

[PanicX]

Like the Guest post, I just recently found out about bing cashback. Used it this weekend to get an extra $35 off a table saw purchase through Sears.com. I still show the cashback as pending, but still looks like some good savings. Killing this program is gonna be a bummer.