When Gannett’s DealChicken hatches in Delaware Aug. 2, it will join two other media-run online deal services. Delmarva Broadcasting Co. (DBC) for nearly three years has featured Get It Half Off. Delaware Today in March started the Deal of the Day program.
Unlike the national LivingSocial and Groupon, Get It Half Off features new deals every Monday at 10 a.m., and there are several deals. There are other differences. In addition to a dedicated e-mail subscription, deals are also promoted on Delmarva’s 11 radio stations, which run from Wilmington to Salisbury, Md.
The deals aren’t limited to one day. “It’s not just a one-day deal that someone has to be registered to know about,” said Mark Weidel, general manager of DBC Interactive, a division of Delmarva Broadcasting Co. “Our customers receive two weeks of marketing with their offer. We list them in our weekly e-mails to listeners.” And the offer is listed on the website, getithalfoff.com. If the offer does not sell out, it can remain on the site until it does. “It’s a minimal cost investment with a big return,” Weidel said.
In the case of Get It Half Off, the price that the customer pays is 50 percent of the face value of the certificates. The money from the sale of the half-priced certificates goes to DBC and no cash goes to the advertiser client. The client gets the spots, website exposure, plus the customer business in return.
Delaware Today’s Deal of the Day is more akin to LivingSocial. There is one single deal promoted each day, usually at half off the value. Why would a magazine start a deal-of-the-day program? “You have to provide a service to your readers to keep them involved,” said Mike Martinelli Jr., director of new media development at Today Media Inc., which owns Delaware Today, Main Line Today and Westchester Magazine in New York, where the program originated.
“We look at it as another product in our digital offerings,” said Charlie Tomlinson, associate publisher of Delaware Today. “There’s no money up front, and you can sit back and get promotion from it.”
While the magazine doesn’t want to negotiate the 50-50 split on the deal, it has offered credits toward magazine ads. Offering a deal or discount also lets the magazine work with businesses that traditionally may not have been interested in Delaware Today, Tomlinson says.
“The bottom line,” he said, “is that it’s a profit motive.”
DealChicken’s splits will be 50-50, but negotiation is possible, says Michael A. Mika, vice president of digital media for The News Journal. But the program is not linked to newspaper advertising. “It’s completely its own entity,” he says. Like Tomlinson, he says the program adds value. That may prove particularly useful for the media, which is struggling to find new ground between the decline in traditional advertising and the rise of Internet marketing.
“It’s one of those things,” he says, “if you’re in media you must have some kind of deal product. Businesses can take care of unused inventory and it’s the consumer flavor of the month right now.”
He’s excited about the Groupon app that lets users find deals wherever they are at any given time. Social group buying, he says, will continue to evolve.