MyPoints’ New Instant Win Game: Search, Spin & Win

Today MyPoints started a new instant win game called Search, Spin & Win. Through October 31st, MyPoints members can get one game play per day by doing a search onsite (enter a search term in the “What are you looking for?” search box on the site) or by doing a search through their new downloadable toolbar. Downloading the toolbar will also get you 25 points. Through the wheel spin game, you can earn points and/or a sweepstakes entry. You can earn an additional sweeps entry for clicking on a sponsor link each day.
What are the prizes and your chances of winning? Let me explain the easiest part first: there will be one grand prize, a trip for 2 to Hawaii for 5 nights, worth $4,000. There will be one first prize, your choice of an HDTV flat screen or LCD TV, worth up to $3,000 — the winner chooses the exact model (with approval). These are the sweepstakes prizes that are chosen by a drawing from all entries, on November 14.
The points prizes are a little confusing. MyPoints says there will be “up to 506,000″ instant point winners. This tells me that over the course of the 21 days of the contest, 506,000 times there will be a winner chosen, and you can win more than once. That’s a whole lot of winners, so it’s important that you play every day. Now, how many winners of each point value will there be? Usually their contest rules spell this out but this time they don’t — they just say that over the course of the 506,000 winners, a total of 3,295,000 points will be awarded. That works out to an average of 6.5 points per win.
The wheel has potential prizes on it of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 100, 200, 300, 400, or 500 points. Judging by the average of 6.5…there will be a lot of low points winners, and not too many of the higher point prizes (which really isn’t surprising, is it?). Keep in mind that the highest prize up on the wheel, 500 points, is still just worth only about $3.85. 25 points is worth about 19c, and the average of 6.5 points is worth 5c. MyPoints estimates that the total value of the points to be given away is $25,701.
From a MyPoints’ member perspective, this contest is lame, lame, lame. Instead of giving half a million people an average of 5 cents, why not give out, say, 50 prizes of $500? Or 250 prizes of $100? I’d rather have slimmer chances of a better prize than a GREAT chance of winning a nickel!
From MyPoints’ business perspective, though, the contest raises awareness of its recently revamped search engine. The Product search feature helps you find the cheapest price for a specific product, both at MyPoints’ merchants and at non-participating merchants. It is far from being comprehensive but it’s a step in the right direction. With the holiday shopping season coming up fast, MyPoints wants to familiarize its members with this feature and $25 grand is a relatively cheap way to do it, especially if it pays off with more shopping through the site in the last three months of the year, their money-making quarter.
So, there you have it — my analysis of the new MyPoints instant win game. Lots of chances to win, but the prizes are far from exciting. If you’re not a member of MyPoints and want to give it a shot anyway, please click here.

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