iMark Interactive

Dear Merchant,

As we recently announced, the Bing cashback program is retiring on July 30, 2010. This email serves as notice that your cashback merchant agreement for Bing cashback Search and/or Bing cashback Shopping will terminate July 30, 2010, at midnight Eastern Time.

We want to introduce you to our new, free Bing Shopping program, but first we’d like to review the steps you should take to prepare for the discontinuation of Bing cashback.

Take action by the end of July

We’ve noticed that you have not been participating in Bing cashback recently, so most of your preparation may already be complete. To help you achieve a smooth customer transition, you should remove references to the cashback program for your ad copy and all pages of your website by end of day July 30. Please be sure that you have done the following:

• Remove the cashback logo () and other cashback graphics or references from all pages of your website.
• Remove links to cashback terms and conditions.
• Unwrap your cashback URLs from your ads in adCenter.
• Remove cashback from your ad copy.

You should also remove the cashback pixel-tracking code from your website on July 31. If you are still participating in cashback, doing so before July 31 may cause issues for your customers.

Please sign in to our Merchant Center to ensure we have the most up to date contact information for you. If you have questions about the end of Bing cashback, please see our Frequently Asked Questions or you may contact cashback help at cshbkhlp@microsoft.com.

New Bing Shopping program

As the cashback program retires, we are announcing a new Bing Shopping program that will enable merchants to list their product catalogs on Bing for free*. This program lets you offer a broader set of products. The Bing Shopping program will commence on July 31, 2010 and will be governed by the Merchant Data Feed Terms of Use. For more information, visit the Bing Shopping page.

If you are interested in being part of the new Bing Shopping program, please contact us at freeshop@microsoft.com to initiate the registration process.

We hope that you will decide to participate in the Bing Shopping program. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft Advertising Bing cashback team

Microsoft Advertising
Dear Merchant,

We are writing to let you know that Microsoft has decided to discontinue the Bing cashback program. After 9:00 P.M. PST on July 30, 2010, we will no longer offer this program on the Bing search results or Bing Shopping pages. This will also be the last day consumers will be able to buy through the Bing cashback program.

What this means for you
As we continue to evolve both the consumer and advertiser experiences for Bing, we will pursue different avenues in order to offer great shopping experiences to consumers and great advertising experiences for our advertisers. We’ve prepared some frequently asked questions about the program closure. Please keep these key points in mind in the coming months:

• This is a great time to spend your cashback budget to drive mid-summer sales. You can increase sales payout rates to the maximum outlined in your merchant agreement to help use up the funds in your piggybank before July 30, 2010. Microsoft will continue to contribute to your piggybank until that date.
• After July 30, Bing Shopping will continue to operate as it does today, but without the presence of cashback. We’re continually improving the Bing Shopping experience to help shoppers discover products, compare offers, and buy seamlessly online. In addition to current features like consumer reviews and ratings and Visual Search, we’ll also offer a more streamlined Bing Shopping experience and better shopping integration with Bing.com.
• We are developing a new shopping program that will offer greater flexibility than you experienced with cashback. You’ll be able to provide a broader set of products in Bing Shopping searches, with little or no extra work. The program is scheduled to begin later in 2010, and we’ll provide more details soon.

What this means for your customers
Bing cashback consumers can continue to shop and earn cashback through 9:00 P.M. PST on July 30. They can redeem all of their acquired cashback earnings consistent with the cashback terms and conditions, as well as access the Bing cashback customer support system through July 30, 2011—a full 12 months after the program ends. Consumers can learn more about the discontinuation of cashback on the Bing web page.

Thank you
We would like to thank the more than 1200 cashback advertisers who joined us for this two-year journey. With over 82 million Bing searchers,* we are still strongly committed to being the destination for all commerce-related searches. Please stay tuned for more online shopping innovations from Microsoft, and again, check out the frequently asked questions to learn more about these changes.

Sincerely,

Microsoft Advertising Bing cashback Team