We’ve been wondering about the fate of the coupon industry for the last couple of months.
After the success of Groupon, a lot of local retailers have launched similar product offers. AnnArbor.com has the “real deal”, ValPak recently launched a daily deal, and even some of the local media sites like CBS Detroit are getting involved. Then there’s DealGator, a similar deal engine like Groupon that searches all deal sites, and filters them based on your location and the kind of deals you want.
Since all of these local media guys have existing relationships with the businesses in the market, what does this mean for relevance of Groupon?
Last week Matt Zumstein, our Director of Digital Media, noticed that both Groupon and CBS Detroit were offering the same exact deal for $10 worth of ice cream for $5.
This raises the question if multiple coupon companies can survive in today’s market with the same product offering?
This remains to be seen as Groupon competitors continue to pop up. Though Groupon still remains the leader of this space, the above pricing example leads one to wonder if Groupon will regret rejecting Google’s multi-billion offer. Another interesting insight is that businesses that sign up for these deals give away 35-45% of their profit to the site. Depending on the industry clients usually spend 5-10% of their profits on marketing or advertising.
If a competitor offered more favorable margins to a retailor, what’s to keep them from leaving Groupon? Would smaller niche businesses want to give up that large of a percentage? Could they even entertain that option?
This could be an advantage for local online deal-of-the-day competitors like Ann Arbor’s The Real Deal – focusing on the community aspect while offering niche retailers the opportunity to reach a larger audience.
It is probably still too early to tell. The digital coupon space could be the new retailer battleground, and it will be interesting to see how this space unfolds.
Posted in
marketing,
social media Tags:
ann arbor,
AnnArbor.com,
consumers,
coupons,
detroit,
google,
groupon,
online shopping,
retailors,
shopping
How many times have you been reading an article and find something new you’re really interested in? You are then faced with the dilemma of trying to remember it so you can research it later when you’re done reading the article, or you open a new window to research it. 10 minutes later you’ve forgotten about the article you were reading in the first place.
Apture solves this problem with in-browser search results.
I stumbled across this purely by accident while browsing on Read Write Web’s site. Highlight text, and a “Learn More” button displays:
Then, when you click on “Learn More” another small window displays within your browsing session that displays Wikipedia results, results from the site you’re currently browsing, Google and Bing results. You also have the “Videos” and “Images” buttons at the top that display YouTube and Google Images results.
What is so amazing about this is that Apture allows you to browse within these search results, all within the small window – without ever leaving the site you’re on. The other great aspect to it is that you selectively highlight and choose the words you want to look up. You don’t have to worry about hovering over a hidden link and launching an annoying pop-up when you’re in the middle of an article.
It is great for the consumer as a research tool, and great for businesses because it keeps users on their site longer. And yes, you can purchase advertising within the Apture window.
While this feature is not yet widely available, (currently on New York Times, Financial Times, Time, Reuters to name a few), you can download an Apture browser extension that allows you to use it on any site. You can download it here: http://www.apture.com/extension/
Posted in
general Tags:
apture,
bing,
browser,
business,
google,
images,
links,
read write web,
tools,
videos,
wiki,
wikipedia,
youtube
Just about everyone here in the office is a gadget hound.
We love reading up on the latest time sucking gizmos that seem to pop up daily. So, when it was announced that Google TV would soon be available for purchase, our own Digital Media Director, Matt Zumstein, decided he would take the plunge and buy one.
Below is Matt’s experience with Google TV:
I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a new product coming out as I was with Google TV. A TV/box that could stream the Internet and allow consumers to interact and download any application in the Android store, what’s not to get excited about?
The first day it was available to the public I reached out to a buddy of mine at Google who granted me a 20% discount, even more reason to get excited. I ordered the Sony blue ray Google TV that night and counted the days until it arrived. My wife and I had already created plans to cut cable and stream directly from Hulu and CBS interactive.
The day it arrived, all I could think of was coming home and playing with my new toy. Setting it up was not difficult and took probably twenty minutes. I quickly jumped on Hulu only to get the dreaded error message:
“We see you are trying to access Hulu through Google TV. Hulu is not currently allowing streaming through Google TV but we are working hard to bring you Hulu Plus”.
As multiple obscenities left my mouth I realized the kids were in the other room and I needed to tone it down.
I quickly checked CBS.com, ABC.com & NBC.com only to receive the same error message. My wife and I looked at each other in disappointment but tried to stay optimistic. We went on TBS.com, TNT.com & HGTV.com and found videos we could stream; however the experience was not the same.
TNT videos minimize at every commercial break and you need to manually put back onto full screen.
We also checked out Youtube only to find the quality of the videos on an HDTV was poor at best. We even tried to stream from Fancast which a lot of bloggers were saying was the current work around.
Our first reaction was to return the product immediately since there was no value for us. But again we wanted to stay optimistic about a product I spent the last three weeks dreaming about. Realistically we knew that Google would not strike a deal with the major networks anytime in the near future. But we thought maybe we could justify our purchase with the app store.
Quickly we found out there was no app store, just 8-10 pre loaded applications (most of them paid apps).
While having Vevo as an app and being able to stream from Netflix was cool I couldn’t justify the $400 purchase to my wife or even to myself. It was time to return it.
I called Sony up and stated my case and let them know Google TV was blocked from all the major players. The first person I spoke with told me I could return it but I would have to eat the $10+ shipping cost. Maybe I was a little emotional from my recent disappointment but that was not the answer I was looking for.
Next I was told that I would need to speak with someone from Sony’s technical service department to confirm that the product was not as advertised. After being bounced around a couple departments I finally reached someone who could help me, but unfortunately my phone died and I had to start the process all over again. It was just one of those days.
Finally I spoke with someone at Sony but they swore they could stream Hulu, which I quickly correct by pointing them to several blog postings stating otherwise.
At last I convinced them it was false advertising when I asked them where I could stream the program “Community” which was advertised on all of the TV’s on their website.
Long story short, I spent about two and a half hours with at least five people in customer service and I think I am finally going to be able to save that $10 shipping cost I was so adamant on saving.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the technology is present to stream anything on the web and even download apps specifically from the Android store (Google TV says coming in early 2011 now). The future versions of this product will definitely be something to get excited about, once all the major players are on board.
Personally I am going to wait till version 2.0 or 3.0 comes out before I take a risk on this again.
But until then I’m rating this product 2 out of 5 stars.
Posted in
interactive,
technology Tags:
communication,
customer service,
google,
googletv,
interactive,
internet,
sony,
television,
video,
youtube
Google Labs is working on more personalized search. It allows the user to more easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from their on-line social circle.
When you sign in to Google and do a search, relevant web content written by people in your social circle will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your social circle.” So you can see the opinions and ideas of people you know about what you’re searching for.
What is your social circle? It’s a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Check it out and let us know what you think. Learn more about social search.
Posted in
advertising,
interactive,
new media,
search Tags:
GMail,
google,
search,
Social Search,
Web
On September 23rd, Google released Sidewiki – a plug-in available for the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 2 and higher. It creates a sidebar, contained within your browser window, next to the page content where any Google user can make comments about that page. Google describes Sidewiki as a tool to “contribute helpful information to any web page.”
The idea is to have one easy place to gather information, opinions and background for any site on the Internet, and deliver it to you while you are on that site, without ever having to leave to go to another forum or blog. Unfortunately for site owners and brand managers alike, there is no ability to control what is posted or where it will rank in order. Google has developed an algorithm to help determine which comments are more “relevant” and moves them to the top of the feed. How this is calculated we will probably never know.
Although this has failed in the past (see: Third Voice and Mosaic 1.2’s group annotation function), three things make this a more likely success:
1- The existing server capabilities are far superior than they were in the past.
2- This is a child of Google, so automatically it’s cool, and legitimate.
3 – It is very easy to share via existing social networks. When you expand the comment to read the entire post, the “Share” link at the bottom allows readers to share through Facebook, Twitter, Email or Link. You can also rate it “yes” or “no” if you found the information useful.
To post, you must have a Google account, which can be created for free with any name. A user has the option to comment on the page overall, or highlight text and comment specifically on that text. As you hover over their comment, the area that they are commenting specifically on will be highlighted in yellow on the page.
As a company owner or manager, monitoring these comments is important to creating a better customer experience. Unfortunately, if you take proactive steps and respond to the negative post, there is no way to link your answer directly with their complaint. It will display just like any other comments. In the case of spam or inappropriate content, there is a link to “Report Abuse” next to their comment.
You can block Sidewiki from your page, but this could easily create the impression that you don’t want other people to read what your customers have to say. Just like with independent blogs and forums, the information exists out there. What’s scarier to companies about this is that it’s shown in conjunction with your website. As Sidewiki is in its infancy, there is no reason to panic yet. Download the plug-in for your browser and watch if anyone posts. Better yet, post some positive comments or behind the scenes information yourself. Sidewiki has the potential to become a very powerful tool – so for now, monitor it and watch for it to take off.
Posted in
general Tags:
comments,
google,
internet,
wiki
