In a keynote at Deals 3D in San Francisco today, Gary Kearns, MasterCard InfoServices group executive, said that "I am probably what I buy, not what I search for," and noted that "purchase data is the new demographic" information that…
The appeal of deals was initially their role in discovering new merchants and services, right? But as aggregators and others started entering the deals space, there have been more elements of “shopping,” where people would find the best discounts among…
Aiming to be a Top 5 deals site by the end of next year, Local.com today announced that it has bought Southern California’s Screamin' Daily Deals to provide the infrastructure for its Spreebird daily deals site. The site has been…
We work with online and mobile services every day, so it is easy to lose perspective on what “civilians” really do with such services. There is no better reality test for the progress of technology in our society than going…
Readers of the blog know that we believe the deals space is the springboard for the next generation of …dare I say it…Local Online Commerce. Our Deals 3D conference July 18-19 in San Francisco is the one that couldn’t wait…
We’ve been focused so much on deal a day that we sometimes forget it is just part of the mix when it comes to successful SMB promotions. Seth Gardenswartz of SpaBoom, a provider of promotion services for spas and restaurants,…
The big destination deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial have developed sites in most of the 150 or so large and medium markets in the U.S. How about markets with populations less than 250,000? There are 84 markets with…
Deal aggregators sort through daily deals and find the best ones for consumers in return for a piece of the action. They are primed to make up a healthy part of the extended family of deals products. But it isn’t…
The credit card-based, in-flight beverage, food, entertainment and Internet era has a new twist: “Froogll” deals that can be bought online and targeted to users based on destination (i.e., Las Vegas), gender and observable family status (i.e., single/married/family). Froogll is…
HopStop, a directions portal that competes in the segment against an ever-building Google Maps, today announced its plans to fight the Big G, including new markets, content partners and features. The 20-person site, which gets about one-third of its traffic…
Can Groupon easily extend into the grocery coupon space? No, not at all easily. For starters, food producers used to "cents off" can't really provide goods at 50 percent off, or more, and then provide a commission of 30 percent…
The deals space is largely oriented toward consumers, but is there a role for B2B? That’s the question that entrepreneur John Amato has asked himself. B2B deals have typically been limited to coupons and auctions (i.e., Overstock.com). The founder of…
NextJump has launched a beta version of OO.com, a consumer-facing destination site that seeks to leverage its relationships with merchants, national marketers and local marketing entities including LivingSocial (deals), Restaurant.com (restaurant deals) and now Grubhub (restaurant order out). The site…
Ease of transaction, rewards and “exclusives” will be key to the next generation of deals, and the credit card companies are determined to play a major role. MasterCard is working with NextJump for a special rewards programs, and has a…
The Deals space is so hot, yet there are many unanswered questions about it. We know it will be big, but who really knows what it is going to look like 18 months from now? With that in mind, we…
With Groupon going public, the promotions space is getting tremendously revved up. Hoping to get in on the action are promotional relatives of the deals space, including providers of grocery “cents off” coupons, retail weekly sales (circulars), retail rewards and…
So, do we buy shares in Groupon? We don’t provide investment advice, of course, but as we consider its prospects from a non-investment angle, we’ll be watching for answers to the following eight questions – none of which, unsurprisingly, is…
NBC’s local websites for its 10 owned and operated stations have effectively lowered the average age of users from 44 to 33, boosted the average time spent on site to 12 minutes, and grown its user base to 10 million…
The purchase funnel that takes consumers from awareness to transaction and retention has been an article of faith among marketers for many years. TV advertising, for instance, is “upper funnel.” Yellow Pages, at the point of sales consideration, has been…
AOL's Patch.com, which is now in 813 markets, is meeting internal goals and poised for success, according to President Warren Webster, who addressed San Diego Interactive Day yesterday. Webster said Patch is now reaching 6.9 million unique visitors and has…
