Chicago Magazine will partner with Next Jump April 28 for "Intersections of Style," a “VIP Shopping Night” that will bring thousands of Chicagoans to select stores offering exclusive discounts and perks (i.e., “champagne check-in”). The event is being promoted by…
Chicago-based Groupon is pushing hard in Silicon Valley to build a major tech presence on the back of Mobility, a mobile services firm purchased last year. One piece of evidence: a billboard on the 101 touting the company as a…
When hyperlocal zeroes in on local marketplaces, it makes a lot more sense to me. Witness ShopBuffalo, an attractive new marketplace from The Buffalo News launched as a companion to Buffalo.com. The site has partnered with ShopCity and Hero, a…
Instant deals designed for mobile consumers on the go look like the next big extension in the deals space. LivingSocial told AllThings D that it is offering instant $1 “Walk In” deals for lunch in its headquarters city of Washington,…
Retail inventory has been revving up as a new, highly mobile-oriented tool for retailers to highlight stock on hand and steer consumers to store locations. It is an important lead-generating feature on new shopping portals, such as FindnSave. Research by…
Groupon has been reaching deep into the verticals, first with home and garden, which launched a couple of weeks ago. Now it is testing real estate leads via a Chicago offer with Dream Town Realty. As first reported by Crain’s…
The San Diego Union-Tribune is buying DiscoverSD. com, a lifestyle website founded in 2006. The acquisition, in the works for six months, was made with an eye toward expanding the UT’s fast growing Daily Deal business arm, which is expected…
One of the big themes in local this year is the increased amount of localization in national ad campaigns. We saw it with U-Haul and Progressive Insurance a couple of weeks ago on our podium at ILM East in Boston.…
The home and trade leads space was getting a lot of attention a year ago, with a number of social media driven leads companies hoping to cut in on longtime leaders such as ServiceMagic and Angie’s List. Among the contenders:…
Many thanks to our BIA/Kelsey community for the real success of ILM East last week in Boston. We appreciate that there was a ton of competition for people's time, and we still managed a very strong showing (final tally: 455…
If you can’t be a major destination site such as Groupon or LivingSocial, the deal exchange space appears to represent the largest revenue opportunity for deals companies. Exchanges, which take commissions from originating publishers for placing deals in additional publications,…
McClatchy Newspapers surprised everyone last July when it opted to let the fox into the chicken coop by signing up with Groupon for local deals. At the time, McClatchy Interactive head Chris Hendricks saw it as a net plus for…
If you are a small business, what do you do after you run the daily deal? Or how do you run a daily deal-like promotion “safely,” without hurting your brand? These are the questions a number of start-ups have posed…
Deal a day works well for home and trade services, but there are some important considerations to consider, notes Cox Search VP Rhonda Hills, who has been working on Kudzu.com.. Hills spoke this week at ILM East in Boston. Kudzu,…
Gilt City CEO Nate Richardson, speaking at ILM East, said the site has married good deals with highly curated lifestyle items and services. As such, it has strongly differentiated itself from other deals providers. Indeed Gilt City’s ability to leverage…
Lead generation has gotten a bad reputation because leads can be inexact, old and sold to too many players. But the new model of a leads marketplace with auctioned leads to the highest bidders can keep them fresh and responsive.…
Events and “recreational discovery” are being transformed by social media, as evidenced by the development of Eventbrite, a new ticketing platform, and Goby, which helps consumers find things to do, including travel. Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz noted that his company,…
Facebook is less about business development or forming partnerships than establishing itself as an identity platform, notes Maz Shirafi, Sr. Manager of Monetization, who was speaking at BIA/Kelsey’s ILM East conference this week in Boston. Sharafi also noted that Facebook’s…
Foursquare is out with a new tool for businesses that should make it easier to sign up and use the service, which already serves 250,000 businesses, according to GM Evan Cohen, who was speaking at ILM East. Foursquare has also…
Mobile is playing an increasingly large role for deal a day, with some companies seeing it accounting for 20 percent to 25 percent of their traffic. But making transactions from mobile devices remains a work in progress. There is apparently…
