Microsoft to Retire Bing Cashback on July 30th
The Bing Cashback feature, the one that was meant to help you save money on online purchases, will be retired by the end of the month, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced. According to Microsoft, the feature will be retired because it was not a big hit with all the users out there.
Until July 30th at 9:00 pm PST it’s business as usual with Bing Cashback. After that, the feature will no longer be available. Customer support will continue to be provided for a period of 12 months. You will also have 12 months to redeem any cashback you have earned through your cashback account.
“One of the principles we have here at Bing is to constantly experiment and learn. We do this to ensure we are keeping pace with new social and technology trends, and can continue to deliver great value for our customers and advertisers. As part of this ‘test-and-learn’ mentality, we will be retiring the Bing cashback feature, which means that the last day you can earn cashback will be July 30, 2010,” commented Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business Group.
You see, Bing Cashback was meant to help advertisers deliver tempting offers to the user, and provide the user with a new shopping experience. By offering a percentage of sales back to the users, it was hoped that numerous users would be attracted to Bing. Unfortunately things did not work out as expected.
The Bing Cashback feature was rolled out in May 2008. Microsoft says it saw great ROI on the over a thousand merchant partners that provided great offers to customers. What Microsoft did not see during all this time was broad adoption of Bing Cashback – not as much as Microsoft had hoped for. So the company decided to pull the plug on Bing Cashback and focus on other things.
“So we are taking all the learning from the effort and putting it into some new programs for you and our advertisers designed to provide amazing shopping experiences for consumers and great opportunities for advertisers,” added Yusuf Mehdi.
Until July 30th at 9:00 pm PST it’s business as usual with Bing Cashback. After that, the feature will no longer be available. Customer support will continue to be provided for a period of 12 months. You will also have 12 months to redeem any cashback you have earned through your cashback account.
“One of the principles we have here at Bing is to constantly experiment and learn. We do this to ensure we are keeping pace with new social and technology trends, and can continue to deliver great value for our customers and advertisers. As part of this ‘test-and-learn’ mentality, we will be retiring the Bing cashback feature, which means that the last day you can earn cashback will be July 30, 2010,” commented Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business Group.
You see, Bing Cashback was meant to help advertisers deliver tempting offers to the user, and provide the user with a new shopping experience. By offering a percentage of sales back to the users, it was hoped that numerous users would be attracted to Bing. Unfortunately things did not work out as expected.
The Bing Cashback feature was rolled out in May 2008. Microsoft says it saw great ROI on the over a thousand merchant partners that provided great offers to customers. What Microsoft did not see during all this time was broad adoption of Bing Cashback – not as much as Microsoft had hoped for. So the company decided to pull the plug on Bing Cashback and focus on other things.
“So we are taking all the learning from the effort and putting it into some new programs for you and our advertisers designed to provide amazing shopping experiences for consumers and great opportunities for advertisers,” added Yusuf Mehdi.
