MSN IM Users Paid to Add Advertising To SN

Ah the wild wild web. A new scheme by Chinese company 5Sai.com is proposing to place advertising in user names of heavy MSN instant messaging users. The idea is that they will award points to the users who spend the most time online using the SN.

5Sai strongly maintains that this initiative represents an as of yet untapped advertising channel - one which will be very big in the future. I can just see it now:

Mickael57_Buy_Nike_Trainers: Greetings everyone.
Bigman9938_Get_viagra_cheap_with_axiom.com: Hi Mike.
Peter67_Find_a_new_job_today_at_monster_co_uk: How's it hangin?
Mickael57_Buy_Nike_Trainers: Just fine. Wazzup?
Bigman9938_Get_viagra_cheap_with_axiom.com: Just discussing last night's game.
Lukuz2774_Cheap_car_insurance: Yeah it rocked.

Currently, 5Sai claims that some $3.8m is being made available to its users via rewards and cash payments. Currently the 5Sai advertising service only supports Microsoft's MSN and Windows messenger software, and in order to qualify, users must be online for at least three hours between 9am and 6pm on weekdays to earn any points (so basically its for unemployed Internet addicts only.)

Hah! Sorry that last bit is funny.

To me, this sounds like it is just one more stab in the dark. How do they differentiate folks who just leave their messenger on...and aren't actively using it? I know plenty of people who are "on" for weeks at a time, but aren't really there. So, whether it will actually work...we'll that's just another story.