New data suggests daily deal market isn't dead yet
In the past, we've reported that the daily deal market may be (slowly) dying. But new data suggests just the opposite: Revenues from the North American daily deal market market grew 9% from July to August.
“Facebook’s shuttering of its Deals business at the end of August led to a lot of chattering about whether the deals business, as a whole, was doomed. If Facebook couldn’t make a go of it, how could anyone else?
It didn’t help that, just a few days later, Yelp announced it was cutting in half the number of its sales people focused on its own deals product.
But new data from Yipit shows that the deals business is actually growing at a healthy clip. Revenues from the North American market—as well as numbers of deals offered—grew nine percent from July to August. Groupon’s own revenue grew 13 percent, to $121 million. Annualized, that makes it a whopping $1.5 billion company.
And a series on conversations with experts in this space uncovered the more important lesson from Facebook’s about-face. Conventional wisdom has held that there are low barriers to entry to this business. But as it turns out, there are in fact many pieces to the puzzle of running a successful deals enterprise, and the key ones aren’t so easy to put together. That’s giving some companies—including Groupon, LivingSocial, and even Amazon—a competitive advantage.”
