SWEEPTAKES: Window of Oppurtunity?
IT APPEARS the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” fad is influencing business decisions. Two young Florida dot-com-ists are trying to expand their young company by giving away big bucks.
As bizarre as it may sound, the founders of WinDough.com, have acquired 900,000 members – mostly women between the ages of 20 and 40 – by offering them a chance to win something for nothing. (We call that a sweepstakes, guys.)
Starting from an initial $10,000 grand prize when they launched 18 months ago, founders Scott and Dan Kurland now give away $1 million.
They have come up with a technology that they say drives Web surfers to e-commerce sites by putting the advertiser’s banner in the same “Instant Prize Window” as the winning notifications. (They gotta make money somehow.)
Players can watch – hopefully – for their name to pop up in the winner’s window while doing their word processing or sending e-mails.
By design, the way the game works is that the players are compelled to watch. When the player sees the words: “You Win,” she has 30 seconds to click on the banner to make a claim on her prize. Otherwise, she misses out.
WinDough.com claims to have an ad banner clickthrough rate nearly five times the industry average and a user reach of more than 2 million per month.
“Our content is advertising, but the Web user doesn’t mind because the advertising banners alternate with the prize banners,” says vice president Dan Kur land. “And our advertisers don’t feel like their banner ads are in cyber-limbo.”
CEO Scott Kurland justifies the approach this way: “The key to succeeding as an online publisher is to grab the consumer’s attention and point them toward somebody’s e-commerce site where a transaction can be made.”
The question is this: Will users always be able to distinguish between the chance to win a sweepstakes prize – for which legally no purchase is necessary – and an item offered for sale on a linked site?
