Google Offers has added several daily deals aggregators to its mix, along with a personalization quiz to help ward off the so-called deal fatigue afflicting users.
Google
(NASDAQ:GOOG) Oct. 27 moved to expand its Google Offers purview to include more
than restaurants, museum and massages, adding offers for outdoor sports,
classes and luxury goods from new daily deals providers.
To
do this, Google
partnered with 14 deal providers. They include Dealfind, DoodleDeals, Gilt
City, GolfNow, HomeRun, Juice in the City, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, Plum District,
PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com Schwaggle, TIPPR and zozi.
Deals
from these players will appear alongside Google's own Offers, and when users
click on them, they stay within the Offers framework instead of being whisked
away to the deal sites.
Google's newish deal aggregator property, The Dealmap, helped with the
aggregation, though Google declined to say exactly how.
"Now,
with one account you can easily purchase, manage and redeem all your offers in
one place," explained Nitin Mangtani, group product manager for Offers.
The
caveat is that this aggregate of new deals will launch first in the San
Francisco Bay Area, leaving out the 40-plus other markets where Offers plays.
Google said it will gradually introduce deals from its partners in the coming
months.
Google
is also offering existing Offers users a new personalization quiz that lets
users tip Offers off to what categories and preferences they like. The company
will then send users the tailored offers, based on their location, that match
their interest in one email. Users may always update their preferences.
Offers
launched in Portland, Ore., last April, offering people in that city local
discount deals of 50 percent or more to restaurants, bars and other stores.
Offers closely hews to the formula popularized by Groupon, which rocketed
to stardom in 2010 and spurned a $6 billion acquisition bid from Google in
December.
Groupon,
which competes with LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe and others, went on to raise $950
million from investors and has met with bankers to discuss an initial public
offering
Indeed,
the Offers launch came at a time when Groupon was attracting strong IPO
interest. While Groupon's IPO star has faded somewhat due to curious accounting
and the fact that its growth has slowed, Offers has slowly crept into other
cities, from San
Francisco and New York City in July, to Baltimore, San Diego and San Jose,
Calif., earlier this week.
Offers
is also facing new competition from Microsoft
Bing, whose own Deals Website aggregates discounts from Groupon,
LivingSocial, Nordstrom, Target and many others.
One
thing is abundantly clear: All of these local deals providers are at risk of
succumbing to deal fatigue. That requires more selective, targeted offers, the
problem Google's personalization quiz is trying to solve.
Email
Print
