Back in November, Microsoft launched an aggressive marketing campaign attacking Google’s credibility with regard to providing product search results. Titled, “Don’t Get Scroogled,” the ad explained that product search results are presented by Google not just by relevance, but are also impacted such as payments by merchants. Now the company is bringing back the ‘Scoogled’ campaign. This time, however, the company is targeting Gmail.
MarketingLand reports that Microsoft’s latest Scroogled stunt involves a survey that was given to over 1,000 adults between February 1 and February 4. The survey in question asked respondents how they felt about their email provider scanning the contents of their email in order to provide them with targeted ads. For those not aware, Google does this.
“Google goes through every Gmail that’s sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads,” Microsoft writes on Scroogled.com. “And there’s no way to opt out of this invasion of your privacy,” the company says, adding, “Outlook.com is different—we don’t go through your email to sell ads.”
Microsoft goes on to say that a user’s email is nobody’s else business but that Google doesn’t feel that way.
“Even if you’re not a Gmail user, Google still goes through your personal email sent to Gmail and uses the content to sell ads,” Redmond says, again, encouraging users to try Outlook.
This campaign is online at scroogled.com but Microsoft is also planning print ads in newspapers.
