Dan Hess, CEO of deals aggregator and research company Local Offer Network, played mythbuster at ILM West, using data to set the record straight on where the market is moving…and where it isn’t.
Hess is convinced that there is still ample room for “specialization” across geography, demography and interests…rather than the doomsday consolidation/roll-up  scenarios forecast by …

How many small businesses have done a deal at this point? Twelve percent, according to a new survey of 2,500 SMBs by MerchantCircle. That’s about a third higher than MerchantCircle’s June survey.
The survey also found a lot of Facebook ad usage. About 23 percent of local merchants report having tried Facebook Ads to date, …

Companies are beginning to focus on loyalty programs for existing customers, rather than simply using deal a day to acquire new customers. Closely and WildFire App are both pursuing loyalty programs.
A loyalty start-up we like is Punchcard, which launches today. The brainchild of MerchEngines founder Andy Steuer, Punchcard is a smartphone app that provides a …

Amazon’s a sleeper bet to really shake up local commerce. But what does that look like? For sure, we see the pieces being assembled…the focus on Amazon Stores, the $175 million LivingSocial investment, the Kindle Fire rollout, the expansion of Amazon Prime to include access to a range of content, the build-up of Amazon Transactions. …

Black Friday and Cyber Monday for holiday shopping are bedrocks of the nation’s economy. Where do deals fit in?
As Bloomberg reports, Yipit Data forecasts that U.S. consumers will spend $80 million to $100 million on daily deals gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas, up from $15 million to $20 million in 2010. A separate poll of …

In the wake of Groupon’s successful IPO, Angie’s List is apparently set to issue its own IPO on Thursday. The offering would raise up to $113 million for the Indianapolis-based company, which provides members-only reviews of services and medical providers. For us, the big question is whether consumers will continue to be willing …

PagesJaunes, the French directory publisher, recently announced the launch of 123deal in Italy, Germany and the U.K. The daily deals and local discounts portal and search engine is also available in France and Spain. The location-based search option allows users to locate categorized deals on an interactive map.
In the U.K., 123deal has 18 partners offering …

Image Source: Reuters via New York Times
Groupon’s final IPO price went from dank estimates of $10-$12 to $20 by the time it was priced, raising $700 million on a relatively small offering of its shares. That puts the company’s value at around $20 billion, by some estimates.
As it turned out, the price could have gone …

Image Source: Mashable
Groupon’s greatly reduced IPO is apparently set to take place on Friday, Nov. 4, in an environment much less friendly than originally envisioned last spring.
The bloom has come off for a number of reasons. Groupon has almost no barriers to entry and has had to contend with dozens and dozens of copy cats …

If you are a major aggregator of daily deals and the industry seems to be slowing down, what do you do next? That’s the question faced by 8coupons, one of the original aggregators. As founder Landy Ung tells us, “we used to get literally an email a day from a daily deal” site seeking a …

Atlanta-based ScoutMob has cut out the high commissions and has launched as an all mobile site as it prepares for the next wave of deals beyond the world defined by Groupon and LivingSocial.
The two-year-old, venture-funded site has 40 employees. It raised $1.5 million in a Series A round, and is looking at a $5 million …

A new partnership between Clear Channel and LivingSocial is seeking to leverage the power of on-air personalities on 500 Clear Channel radio stations. The personalities will rap about the deals in unscripted segments. It would be interesting to know what the split is for something like this. The arrangement is described as a “commission.”
We know …

We’ve long known that coupons provide real traction for SMB advertising. Nothing beats a customer walking through the door with a coupon in hand. But a lot of SMB website publishers haven’t really focused on them.
DataSphere, on the other hand, has had a coupons product for some time. But it only recently has really …

As deals verticalize, we’re intrigued by opportunities for B2B plays. MarketSharing is offering deals tailored for SMBs (office cleaning discounts, office copier repair, etc.).
Now, Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, has launched a pilot with Local Offer Network to provide up to 70 percent off professional health practitioner “consumables,” such as medical gloves, hand …

 
BIA/Kelsey will offer a view into two of our key forecasts at the upcoming ILM Asia conference, Oct. 25-26 at The Regent Singapore.
The first will be the freshly updated global Yellow Pages forecast, which will be summarized in our opening presentation on Oct. 25.
The following day, we will unveil our global deals forecast. The latter …

Google, Facebook, American Express, Groupon and others are all working on electronic wallet concepts that can help store and process deals along with other promotions and event tickets.
At least one deals vendor, however, is banking that it will take a very long time before a standard develops. The rollout of wallets is just “handing merchants …

ILM Asia has added two exciting speakers to its lineup. Adrian Tan, COO of Groupon Singapore, will join our special Deals Forum on day 2 of ILM Asia.
Meanwhile, Michelle Sherwood, exec VP of strategic marketing at the Australian directory giant Sensis, will talk about that company’s transformation journey.
We’re very excited about our full lineup of speakers at …

Tippr’s efforts to use patents that it had acquired to help persuade deals companies into forming partnerships appears to be over, at least for now. A federal patent lawsuit it brought in February against 14 companies — mostly competing white-label deals providers — has ground to a halt, with all actions settled or dismissed by …

Groupon announced this week that it will soon launch Groupon Goods, a division that will sell selective clearance items. The announcement, which comes a day after it announced a merchant rewards program, shows the company moving to really leverage its deals-oriented user list.
Can Groupon pull it off? To me, it depends on whether Groupon …

Jonathan Marchbank, the CEO of Dealised, an Australia-based leader in providing social commerce and deals software, will address a special forum on the deals space at ILM Asia, Oct. 25-26, in Singapore. 
Marchbank will speak on Oct. 26 during a morning session devoted to the emerging global and Asian deals market. He will offer a perspective …