Saturday, June 25, 2011

Deal Chicken | Google 'Offers' ups payment terms

Gannett's Deal Chicken and myriad other start-ups are taking aim at the sizzling online coupon market that's dominated by Groupon.

Now, comes Google, which launched its version -- Offers -- in Portland, Ore., a month ago, and will soon expand to San Francisco and New York.

In a new post today, Business Insider's Henry Blodget ticks off the advantages Google may have over the competition, starting with better payment terms. "Google Offers will give merchants 80% of the merchant's share of voucher revenue within 4 days of the voucher sale, and the rest within 90 days," Blodget says.

Now, compare that to Deal Chicken's terms, which only gives merchants 30% within five business days, and the remaining 70% within 30 days.

Earlier: Dozens more jobs point to Deal Chicken expansion.

11 comments:

  1. Here in Louisville, Chicken is Great! When we can't sell enough ads to fill the page, call in th Chicken. Half page, quarter, corner of lst column? The Chick fits!

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  2. I guess it's coming. But I go back to my days of eating KFC. I loved to buy the 12-piece KFC bucket with a quart of cole slaw on the side. Fed the two kids and the wife. Funny, but no one wanted me to ever go back to KFC because it has been more than 5 years since I last put it on the table. I do recall we all enjoyed it.

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  3. In Phx. I'm told dealchicken is gonna finish at 350k in revenue in June. I know people would rather nag than celebrate, but I think this is great news for my market and could be a sign of good revenue to come in the markets about to launch. Laugh all you want but money is money.

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  4. Is it switch, and is it sustainable? Is there any profit in those revenues or is the majority of that revenue turned back to the advertiser as detailed in other posts?

    I'd love to celebrate a success anywhere, it would be a great motivator. It's just that too often we've found the cake is a lie.

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  5. Deal Chicken is hiring. I'd put money on that initiative. Yes we are late to the game but so is google and about 1000 other players. Follow the money.

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  6. Gannett is way too late to the daily deals industry. It's already getting crowded, and Google, if it is fully committed to Google Offers, will have huge competitive advantages over Groupon and especially Gannett. If Gannett's leaders were as visionary as their salaries suggest, they would have seen this opportunity at least in 2009, and we would have had the Chicken in place for a year now. Instead their primary strategy has continued to be "cut, cut, cut and pray Macy's and the car dealers call back."

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  7. I disagree on Groupon or Google having a big advantage over Gannett. On a national level yes, but to our local markets no. We could do really well with this.

    Gannett could have tackled Craigslist with free online only ads (with an upsell to print for a small fee) in our local markets but did not. It may have helped save classified revenue or at minimum had eyes going to our websites not somewhere else.

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  8. 6:38 As I understand how Deal Chicken will operate, it will be associated with a newspaper's ad department. This is the fatal flaw. Google and Groupon and Living Social are independent operations, but Gannett is counting on using existing staff to support Deal Chicken. This effectively hides the costs. It also pisses off the regular salesmen, who are pedding retail ads, etc., since they see this operation as poaching on their operations. They resent this, and don't see the odds of making the big deal they can get with retail sales. Deal Chicken's deals are really pedestrian.
    Yes, I know GCI is hell bent to put this into operation, and disregarding what has happened in Phoenix, is taking NO steps to protect the existing network of ads from the impact of Deal Chicken. I think we will see real soon the impact of this will be an evaporation of retail advertisement at GCI newspapers where Deal Chicken operates. This has already happened in Phoenix. GCI cannot make the profits it has made without retail ads, however depleted they are.
    IF GCi wants to do Deal Chicken, it needs to be a separate and self-sustaining operation from the existing newspaper setup. Learn from what happened in Pheonix, or GCI will see a drought in regular ads and be collecting dimes on ads where it used to get dollars. There are digital things that do not work in coordination with traditional print, and this is certainly one. So I think this is going to be one hell of a disaster for GCI.

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  9. 7:50: Just like every other idea that corporate has "hatched" so far. It is so frustrating to watch.

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  10. This is going to create huge internal problems with traditional retail print reps versus the deal chicken reps.

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  11. My brother work's in the digital industry. He actually know's Gannett's new Digital head (name escape's me at moment). My brother e-mailed me saying the new digtal head was a goodmove and the ting's he is doing are the right thing's to be doing. Problem is as poster 6/26 1:15 commented It's waay late. Gannett should have invented GROUPON if they were smart. Gannett should have ad digital chicken 3-4 year's ago. Instead they lay off worker's cutting cost's. When Gannett could have been making million's off a groupon type site. As it is I think digital chicken is a good idea and will make GCI a nice revenue stream. Just a missed opportunity year's ago. Only really smart move I have seen by Gannett last few year's was increasing it's stake in Career Builder when Tribune got more stupid than Gannett.

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