Facebook Deals, ADOTAS’ Assessment of the Daily Deal Space, and SXSW!

In advance of the forthcoming Labor Day holiday, we’d be remiss in not providing our own associated “BBQ/Beach reading”. We’d like to start with some admittedly-self-referential coverage from Gavin Dunaway at ADOTAS regarding the recent “demise” of Facebook Deals, as well as the future of the daily deal space.

Gavin writes,

“But all the other news in the space suggests the daily deal game has hit terminal velocity. It almost feels as if the world is waiting on Groupon’s IPO as a bellwether for the future of daily deals; so far the news has not been promising.

However, I’m with Jay Weintraub in believing the daily deal space isn’t going to die — it is going to be transformed. My money is on white-label discount platforms like Group Commerce and Tippr, which offer technology and services for enabling group-buying at the local publisher level through white-label platforms. In particular, such platforms seem to offer a better proposition for smaller and local businesses in terms of targeting.”

You can read the entire article here.

Regarding Facebook Deals, the biggest lesson here seems to be that you can’t just expect to “flick on” a deals program and expect it to work (even if you’re a major media brand). These programs need to be thoughtfully integrated to the existing experience/brand, and there’s a significant education effort that needs to take place before consumers can be expected to understand the program’s purpose and participate.