As I've been going on about in my recent posts, it's all about "following the money".
The Faster Times and Joshua M. Brown issue a warning and an excellent article at
The article lists 10 important points and finishes with
the “offers space” is going to witness the ugliest brawl in all of social media
Note point (8) where payment is discussed, and (my italics)
unless of course the original Groupon offer was unprofitable (another issue for the offers business).
This is the true issue: How do you know if it works?
When your Yellow Pages rep calls and says "Do you want to pay us again this year?" how do you decide?
If you know it's profitable it's an easy decision.
So how will you know your Offer was profitable?
When we start to see Offers ad extensions roll out online, getting clicks and incurring costs, the participating Merchant has to be able to track online spend to offline sales transactions, and Google has all the infrastructure coming along to close the feedback loop:
- see an offer on your pc (or phone) and click
- download to your phone
- carry phone to Offer
- redeem Offer
- pay with wallet in phone
- online Offer records Offline sale
- we just got paid
This is going to be interesting …