Sixty percent are women. Half play from home, half from work. It advertises on numerous Web sites, telling would-be card holders that they can apply online and get an answer in less than a minute. There is no independent way to determine how successful these Web sweepstakes are for their promoters or whether the advertisers are generating valuable business from the sites. Aronin started FreeLotto last June 1, charging each advertiser 40 cents whenever a player clicks into the advertiser's Web site.
Players point their cursors to where they think the cash is hidden and click.
And mostly they lose. No one has won the big prize yet, since it is hard to find it among 170,000 possible locations. But the iWon site, unlike the other major giveaway sites, can lay claim to being something other than just a place to pass the time playing a game. It acts as a search engine as well, with news, informational sites and plenty of shopping opportunities as well. The popularity of online games has raised questions for corporate America, such as whether it's a good place for advertisers to fly their banners and how companies feel about the time employers spend playing the games when they're supposed to be working.