Crazy times call for crazy ideas. Definitely creative, but will this one work? MSN has started an advertising campaign on Monday (Feb 13) to promote its search engine. They will be giving away up to 1 million dollars in a contest just for using their search engine.

I'm a bit confused if users have to visit the specific contest web site msnsearchandwin.com or if they just go to msn.com, but either way, this is an interesting marketing idea.

One problem up front though. How many times have you searched for something and come across a blinking image saying "You've just won!!"? Clicking the image just sends popups, spam, etc. Yeah, plenty of those out there. I'm afraid users may confuse MSN's legitiment contest message with similar web spam, unless the contest is strictly from within the msnsearchandwin.com site. Although, that would defeat the purpose of advertising their home search engine msn.com. Isn't msn.com where they really want users to go?