Coupons Fast Becoming Online Faves
The move to trying to save more money online should come as no surprise to anyone for all the obvious reasons. With those reasons being so obvious we won’t belabor the point here (btw, for those wondering, the economy still kinda sucks). What is happening though, is the shift from the printed coupon to the online coupon is very real and is creating the same commotion in the heated online v. offline world as the news debate is. After all, many papers are clinging to the fact that their Sunday circulations remain OK because of the perceived savings offered by the coupons.
NCH Marketing Services, a subsidiary of Valassis Communications is reporting an increase of 30% use in traditional coupons with an additional $600 million in savings by consumers. Unfortunately, we often measure just how hot an industry is by how many lawsuits it generates.
This past summer, Valassis won a $300 million verdict against News America Marketing (NAM), a subsidiary of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp. It accused the coupon powerhouse of trying to monopolize supermarket advertising.
In July, following the verdict in Michigan’s Wayne County Circuit Court, NAM president Chris Mixson said the decision “rewards a company that turned to litigation as its business strategy rather than compete.” He said evidence barred by the court would have made a case that Valassis tried “to induce collusion when it announced its new pricing policy in a public investor call.”
So as with most things, the offline world is busy navel-gazing in court while the online business is preparing to move in take control.
While those two titans of paper coupons duke it out, another battleground is emerging. Although a study by Experian Marketing Services, a global information services company, assessed that 70% of households still clip coupons from newspapers, beleaguered print media companies are starting to lose their once tight grip on the market to online competitors.
NCH says online coupon distribution rose 41% during the first 9 months of 2009 and RedPlum.com saw coupon prints from the site jump 51% so far this year. At year-end 2008, online coupons represented 4.8% of all coupons redeemed in the U.S., compared to 6.3% by mid-year 2009.
I am still amazed at how slow and plodding the offline world is in most sectors when it comes to seeing the competitive threat that online services are. Hey, all of you folks in the printed coupon business here’s your wake up call. Google purchased AdMob to get into this business. And to prove they are serious
Google has begun issuing 100,000 window stickers to businesses in more than 9,000 cities and towns. Each window decal has a unique bar code that can be scanned with the camera feature of most mobile devices. The code will then immediately load the browser with information about the business and allow access to related coupons and offers.
You don’t need a printed coupon for that to work.
The One in Which I Ponder the Chances of Success for Microsoft & Yahoo
Now that we’ve all had time to digest Microsoft’s 10-year deal with Yahoo, it’s time to ask ourselves if this partnership will live up to the hype?
It seems like we’ve been talking about this deal every other day for the past year or more. In fact, digging through the Marketing Pilgrim archives–and ending up 30 pages deep in “Microsoft/Yahoo” rumors–I discovered it was back in September of 2007 that the idea first germinated:
…Under the scenario discussed by top executives, Yahoo would have outsourced that search-advertising activity — which places small text ads next to Web search results — to either Google or Microsoft Corp…
At the time, Yahoo’s then CEO Jerry Yang said there were “no sacred cows” for the company. Then promptly dismissed any notion that the company would give up operating its own search engine.
My, how things have changed.
Now–with the drama behind us and the deal announced–we need to consider if this act of collusion will end up presenting a serious challenge to Google’s dominance. While Microsoft’s Bing.com continues to inch forward with market share, will the general search public flock to the Google alternative–or will it send us deeper into the warm embrace of the search engine we’ve loved for the past decade?
I could see how we might ultimately come to like Bing. It’s got a catchy name, some cool TV ads running, and could provide those that love to live outside the mainstream, a flashy new search engine to evangelize. But, does a partnership with Yahoo actually dilute Bing’s chances of success? I’m not talking about success as measured by an increase in market share–by that measure, the deal is already a winner. I’m talking about real success. The kind of success that doesn’t just come from cannibalizing Yahoo’s existing search traffic, but from honest-to-goodness market share stolen from Google.
That’s where I simply don’t see much chance of a happy ending. I’ve worked for a company that decided it wanted to increase market share by means of acquisitions. Sure, you get to show growth on paper, but that’s not growth that’s sustainable. It pleases the shareholders, but neither the heart or mind are satisfied. Want further proof that buying market share is not sustainable? Take a look at the stagnation going on over at IAC’s Ask.com.
The biggest obstacle now facing Microsoft’s Bing is this: do we consider it a weaker offering, because it had to partner with Yahoo? Or, does the partnership increase its chances of success?
Perhaps the only glimmer of hope for Microsoft is that Yahoo has played this role in a previous life. Remember when all of your searches at Yahoo were powered by Google? Back then, Google was still building its own audience, and the exposure provided by Yahoo was, obviously, valuable to the company. Can Yahoo do the same for Bing?
There are many questions that I’m leaving unanswered. This post is merely a means for me to share my own thoughts on the deal–not to tell you how you should feel about it. Feel free to chime in with your own opinion on the chances of Microsoft and Yahoo truly challenging Google. I look forward to reading them!
<img border="0" src="http://constanthit.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/3be0d_vertical-leap-seo-234.gif”>
Latest Click Fraud Report Lands on My Desk With a FUD
It’s kind of hard for me to report on Click Forensics without being biased–I’ve long maintained that click fraud will simply be one of many "costs" associated with paid search and is therefore a non-issue. So, you should keep that bias in mind, when reading the following:
Click Forensics’ reports may put them out of business.
Maybe I’m being extreme, but when Click Forensics first launched its Click Fraud Index, it was able to report on massive amounts of click fraud and likely attract many new clients as a result. Four years on, I hardly ever hear anyone–outside of Click Forensics–claim click fraud to be a major issue–and the latest index suggests the same.
For the second straight quarter–and year over year–the click fraud rate declined:
The overall industry average click fraud rate was 12.7%. That’s down from 13.8% for Q1 2009 and from the 16.2% rate reported for Q2 2008.
Of course, that would be bad news for any company that has a business model based on preventing click fraud, so we get some FUD thrown in…
…increasingly sophisticated attacks, such as publisher collusion fraud, continue to be a concern. Ad networks should pay close attention to such threats in the coming months.
The report goes on to suggest that Click Forensics is discovering "new click fraud schemes" such as…
Publisher collusion fraud was one example. This scheme occurs when online publishers use rotating IP-addresses or botnets to click ads on their own sites in order to generate inflated commissions from unprotected ad networks.
Really? You’re just discovering that? That’s been around as long as click fraud itself has. Me thinks you might be grasping at straws (at best) or trying to spread some fear (at worst).
What do you think? Has the click fraud rate really dropped? Has click fraud become more sophisticated and thus more difficult to track?
Let’s hear your own bias! 
(via)
Apple’s Irresistible Force Meets Google’s Immovable Object–Who Wins?
What happens when the irresistible force meets an immovable object?
The irresistible force wins! The immovable object publicly complains.
That appears to be the case as Google announces Google Latitude for the iPhone and, in the same announcement, gripes that Apple is to blame for the lack of an actual application.
We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.
Huh? “…Apple thought would be best for iPhone users.” What about Google Latitude users? Didn’t Apple give any thought as to how the main users of the service would want to use it? I love my iPhone, but won’t be using Google Latitude until it’s available as an app. Then again, an app sounds pretty lame too–considering Apple won’t let apps run in the background:
Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.
We could talk about the need for background apps on the iPhone, but that would take us off-topic. Instead, I’m intrigued that, despite all the talk of too much collusion between Apple and Google, Google wasn’t able to get its own way with a single, innocuous, iPhone application.
If Google can’t influence Apple enough to let it publish an iPhone application, do we really have anything to fear from Schmidt’s board position? And, what does this say about who wears the pants in this relationship? 
PS. Oh yeah, you can get Google Latitude by pointing your iPhone browser here: google.com/latitude
(image credit: unknown)
The Collusion Of Editorial & Advertising; Plus: Cheap Ways To Buy Exposure
Many reporters would like you to believe there is a firm wall between content and advertising, but often they merge…particularly for niche or trade related publications. When my wife was getting started in business and wanted to promote her first website, a trade magazine kept trying to push her for an ad and she kept [...]
….
