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Apr. 19, 2007 at 8:34am Eastern by Greg Sterling
Judy's Book Launches 'CouponLooker' Search Engine
Judy's Book, which has gone through a very interesting and very public change in its business model – from local directory with reviews to shopping site – has now launched a search engine for deals and coupons: CouponLooker.com. It seeks to be an aggregator of deals online to enable people to find them more quickly and easily. There's also a widget strategy for affiliate distribution.
Of course, people love deals and saving money. But you still might be surprised to hear that the total face value of distributed coupons in the U.S. was a whopping $332 billion in 2006 (most of which were never redeemed) and that more than 79% of the U.S. population uses coupons. There are also data that show more than 50% of Sunday newspapers are purchased for the coupons.
Given all this consumer interest in coupons and the value of the market as a whole, it's also something of a surprise there really hasn't been a good place to find them online since the bubble burst in 2000-2001. That might give Judy's Book an opportunity here versus some existing sites that haven't seemed to grab solid mindshare.
Among existings sites, there are Coupons.com and CoolSavings, which have been around for some time. There is also Valpak.com, the online companion to the popular direct mail couponer. There's also Boodle (not to be confused with classifieds aggregator Oodle), which offers grocery coupons. Finally, there's IAC's Entertainment ("The Entertainment Book"), a hit offline but so far a non-entity online.
I'm sure there are others; but the point is that there's no "top of mind" coupon site for most consumers. And most coupon sites, because of uneven coverage, are "push" models instead of "pull" (the search model). As an aside, coupons are interesting for two additional reasons: their application to mobile and the way that they help track the relationship and "close the loop" between online advertising and offline purchases.
Google has added coupons to Google Maps through deals with Valpak and, only this week, signed a deal with PennySaver. It also allows local businesses to create coupons in its local business center (Yahoo also allows businesses to add coupons and introduced a coupons "shortcut"). Still coupons have not been highly visible on Google or Yahoo either.
As I said, Judy's Book has a real opportunity to build a consumer destination for coupons. And while online coupons are still a tiny fraction of the total market, they're poised for growth. I previously estimated that the total face value of online coupons will be worth just over $16 billion in 2010 and the redeemed value of those coupons will be about $2.4 billion.
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By Greg Sterling
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See Related Stories In: Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines, Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines
Reader Comments
Well written! A couple of clarifications.
It isn't $332 billion. That's just GROCERY coupons. the value of merchant coupons (pizza, hair cuts etc.) is unknown, and really unknowable.
To a large extend CoolSavings no longer does couponing. Their grocery coupons are now supplied by SmartSource.
Boodle (my company) also offers local coupons via our newsppaer partners. Not all participate, however.
Again, a very intersting and well-done article!
It's amazing how much money is thrown away in unused grocery coupons alone. As referenced above, that $332 billion total does not include many other kinds of coupons. I suggest that if we could also include online coupons (coupon codes) into this equation the unused value would be truly staggering.
This information is wonderful. There is another new discount/coupon website being launched www.grabaloo.com.
I think searchengineland always comes up with the most exciting material and I love visiting here. I usually use http://www.boddit.com because it has the best deals from everywhere.
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July 25, 2007 11:25 PM
There's also http://www.searchalldeals.com which I've been using for a month or so, and have saved a bunch from there. Also, saves me a ton of browsing time by having all my deal sites on one page.