Report: 798 Daily Deal Sites Folded In The Last 6 Months Of 2011. According to a new report from Daily Deal Media, a great source of news, information and data about the hot daily deal industry, there’s a whole lot of consolidation and death going on among the many Groupon wannabes on this planet – at least in some regions.
Daily Deal Media is keeping most of the good stuff behind a steep paywall, but shared some key findings from its report in a press release earlier this morning. According to them, the world has lost close to 800 – 798 to be precise – daily deal sites in the second half of 2011. In Asia, particularly, daily deal sites seem to come and go at a tremendously rapid pace. According to Daily Deal Media, 1,348 Asian daily deal sites vanished in the last 6 months of 2011 alone. However, in the same timeframe, 324 new daily deal sites sprung up in Latin America (+27.5 percent) and another 235 in Europe (+15.7 percent).
The US was rather flat. Overall, the total number of deal publishers dropped 7.61 percent in the second half of 2011. Daily Deals: Where Ads Become Content. Schedulicity. BOZEMAN, MT (July 18, 2011) - Schedulicity (www.schedulicity.com), the leader in online appointment scheduling for small businesses, today unveiled Deal Manager, a new, first of its kind scheduling service that allows appointment-dependent businesses to define the maximum number of appointments that can be generated over the lifespan of a given promotion and configure how many promotional appointments will be accepted per day or for the entire duration of the deal. Deal Manager was created directly in response to the proliferation of daily deal companies and the potential challenges they pose to small businesses.
Many service providers are inundated with discounted appointment calls after partnering with a daily deal site, particularly at the beginning or end of a deal cycle. As a result, discounted appointments will often cannibalize full-priced services and inconvenience loyal existing customers and potential full priced walk-ins. About Schedulicity. Groupon S1 (IPO): The Importance of Untangling Statements Regarding SalesForce Efficiency « takingpitches. My second in-depth installment looking at Groupon’s cost structure, following up on my post about the marketing line, explores Groupon’s SG&A costs. SG&A represented 84% of gross profit in 2010 and 66% of gross profit in 1Q 2011. Much of this is compensation of sales people, according to the S1, although there are other things in here as well, such as payment to writers and customer service people and credit card processing costs, just to name a few.
But a primary driver seems to be sales people, although there are some questions I raise about this statement below. Therefore, SG&A, assuming Groupon does not change its business model to rely less on sales people, represents an ongoing cost. Unlike marketing, although Groupon says that it expects SG&A to become less as a percentage going forward (perhaps sales people can become more efficient?) , there is no argument that sales compensation is an upfront cost that subsides dramatically after a certain point. 2010 compared to 2009. What’s Wrong with Groupon? By James Kwak Groupon plans to go public later this week. According to the latest leaks, things are going well: the IPO valuation, scaled back from $30 billion to about $12 billion, may be raised because of a successful road show. Apparently even after the company conceded that the amount they pay to a merchant does not count as revenue, investors have decided they like what they see.
But there is still something fishy about Groupon’s business model. The company’s basic story goes like this: We have been losing money (more than $300 million so far this year) because we are investing in building our customer base. In essence, we are paying for customers. This is the most compelling evidence that their business model will work (p. 81): “The Q2 2010 cohort is illustrative of trends we have seen among our North American subscriber base. In other words, they spent $5 to get each subscriber, and have since earned $25 in revenue from that subscriber. Yipit’s Daily Deal Report: Industry Revenue Dips, Groupon Gains Share, And Travel Deals Take Off. Yipit, the site that aggregates and recommends daily deals based on users’ locations and interests (and raised $6 million back in June from a host of VCs), released some interesting trend data today on the daily deals space.
Overall, July was not a memorable month for the daily deals industry, though there were a few clear winners, including everyone’s favorite deals site, the big kahuna, Groupon. Based on data collected from over 650 daily deals services, Yipit found that the industry’s total revenue declined in July by 7 percent in North America’s largest markets — in spite of a slight increase in the number of total offers. The data also shows that the number of daily deals sites declined slightly in July, with 38 deals sites closing their doors compared to 36 new sites being launched. As for the big players, according to the report, Groupon’s revenue declined 4 percent from June, while, in contrast, LivingSocial’s revenue declined by a sizable 18 percent.
Groupon: The IT moving parts behind the growth. Groupon's growth---revenue, subscribers and merchants---is off the charts and under the hood rests on whale of an information technology story. In many respects, Groupon is the ultimate IT petri dish. In two years, it has grown from a company that could be run on a simple spreadsheet to one that needs systems spread across the globe. Meanwhile, Groupon is a greenfield opportunity---there aren't legacy systems dating back decades.
As noted previously, Groupon has bet big on NetSuite to be its system of record and Salesforce.com for its salesforce management. Groupon is going cloud and I've talked to at least five SaaS integrators and on-demand application providers that are pitching the company heavily. Aside from those cloud details, Groupon's systems have been a bit of a mystery. Data centers: Groupon has hosted data centers in Miami and Dallas in the U.S.
Internal systems: Groupon said it plans to combine internal systems in North America and abroad. Security: Groupon said: Awe.sm investment for Groupon analytics partner. 2 December 2011 | By Brian Tarran US— Groupon’s social media analytics partner Awe.sm has raised $4m in a series A financing round to help expand its team and add features to its performance tracking platform. The company produces a set of APIs that let software developers add performance tracking capabilities to the social features of their websites and online applications. Once installed, Awe.sm says site owners can track which social media posts lead to page views, sign-ups, purchases and other business metrics. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Strauss (pictured) said: “Social marketing is an enormous opportunity for innovation – but companies need tools focused on driving their specific business goals.”
Awe.sm’s financing round was led by Foundry Group, a new investor, and existing backer GRP Partners. Neu Venture Capital also participated, as did KBS+P Ventures, the investment arm of the ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. Follow us on.