Citysearch Launches Daily Deals Service For PC, Mobile

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Citysearch plans to unveil a daily deals offering and mobile platform Tuesday that automatically pushes coupons to consumers based on location.

As more businesses drive consumers from the Web into physical stores through local coupon campaigns, Citysearch will tap its CityGrid Media advertising network, which includes thousands of advertisers, to aggregate deals. It also signed with GroupOn and The DealMap for the same purpose. The company plans to expand its network in the future.

Skyhook will integrate its location engine into the deals by Citysearch for Android. At launch, the mobile application becomes available on Android and iPhone.

Consumers opt-in to allow technology on mobile phones -- GPS and triangulation --- to estimate the person's location. Those not wanting to opt-in can manually tell the application their location, which allows the person using the app to identify deals anywhere, even though they are not near the city, the town or the physical stores.

Despite a crowded field, technology built into Citysearch's app, which automatically pushes the coupon to the consumer after opting in, could provide the key to success. JP Bedoya, senior director at Citysearch, says the application also relies on "smart type ahead" technology, which makes suggestions on possible places and deals, based on location or topic.

Users can personalize the list, filter the deals into categories, and save them in a specific folder. "You can print the deal through Apple's Airprint technology on the iPhone introduced with version 4.2 iOS," Bedoya says.

Aside from CityGrid, users will see aggregated daily deals from GroupOn; the site gets a percentage of the revenue share. Advertisers in the CityGrid network pay based on performance.

Citysearch gets a monthly budget from advertisers, along with a corresponding cost per click for every time the site displays a company's business profile that drives traffic to the page. Using the same model, advertisers pay for displaying the daily deals offer, along with the business information.

With the launch of Deals by Citysearch, the company unveiled a contest enabling one user to win a month of free deals by entering their email address between today and Feb. 24. They will announce the winner on Feb. 25.

 

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