In the context of Google’s reported $6 billion acquisition offer to Groupon, questions were raised at ILM:10 about the true potential of deal a day beyond its current two or three daily deals and banner ad e-mails. For Nimble Commerce CEO Prashant Nedungadi, the real potential is moving local advertising into performance-based models.

“Group buying is just one model,” said Nedungadi. “There are lots of interesting kinds of models. We haven’t event gotten into search, or Yellow Pages. Imagine if it was part of the search experience. That’s what we’re excited about.”

Ultimately, Nedungadi added, “we want to establish a strong relationship with consumers. At the end of the day, it is an e-commerce platform.”

Later, during another segment of The Deal a Day SuperForum, 8Coupons.com cofounder Landy Ung suggested another model is to provide featured listings. The site currently lists 1,000 deals a day. Some of the deal-a-day sites are providing aggregators like 8coupons commissions of 10 percent to 35 percent. In that context, the real value lies in having offers discovered. They’ll pay more to be a featured listing on the top of curated categories, said Ung. “Our partners are asking us to optimize at the top. It is a whole new business model we haven’t tapped into.”

During the same session, The Dealmap‘s Jennifer Dulski noted there may be additional opportunities with mobile e-commerce. Fifty percent of The Dealmap’s usage is currently mobile, although only 4 percent of deals providers currently have mobile capabilities. That is bound to grow quickly, said Dulski, but more work needs to be done to ensure smooth transaction capabilities for not only online apps, but also offline goods.

“The mobile transaction flow is very, very clunky,” said Dulski. The goal is to get to one click. The problem is that “Apple won’t use in app for anything other than virtual good. I predict they’ll change that within a year.”

The post ILM:10: Deals as an ‘E-Commerce Platform’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Deals found by The DealBot are added to 8coupons’ geolocated “MoneyMap” showing deals and merchant locations. Users can weigh in on coupons by affirmatively voting on a section called “Is this deal real?” The overall capabilities of the offering appear to be similar to Center’d’s “The DealMap,” which launched last month.

Founder Landy Ung says she expects The DealBot to add from 5 percent to 10 percent more offers to 8Coupons, which currently boasts over a million coupons from more than 300,000 merchants. The site has 1.5 million monthly users, she says. Most of the site’s coupons come from partners such as ValPak, Money Mailer and RedPlum. 8Coupons’ technology enables national companies to detail local offers. (That would have been helpful last week when I brought a Denver-based coupon from Einstein’s Bagels to Carlsbad, forcing the local manager to override her computer system.)

Some are also sent in by users — some via mobile, which was the company’s initial orientation and remains a channel. The site also aggregates “deal a day” offers from Groupon and 80 others, which Ung says have been very popular, driving a “spike in traffic.” In addition, the site adds context to offers via relationships with 30 to 50 shopper-bloggers, such as 89th and Broke. “We drive a lot of traffic to them,” says Ung.

The post 8coupons Launches The DealBot; Scans Web for Offers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.