Full Circular: AP, Newspapers Introduce Mobile Offers

With newspaper publishers facing competition from social commerce sites like Groupon and LivingSocial on the coupon front, The Associated Press and 40 of its largest newspaper partners are moving to enhance ad circulars by integrating mobile advertising, including location-specific offers and interactive tools.

The new service, called iCircular, will automatically deliver geolocated deals and special offers to consumers, based on their current location. The iCircular service also provides consumers with tools to create shopping lists, connect to social media and store loyalty card information.

Users can sign up for the service by visiting a "Deals section" on the newspapers' apps or mobile sites.

The HTML5 version of iCircular was developed by Vectorform and the iOS version was created by Five Mobile, while Cognizant designed and built the back end. Performance metrics for the service will be provided by comScore's Digital Analytix.

The first phase will deliver deal offers from national retail advertisers, including JCPenney, Kohl's Department Stores, Kmart, Macy's, Staples, Target, Toys "R" Us, Walgreens and Walmart, as well as variety of local and regional advertisers.

advertisement

advertisement

Participating newspapers include New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At launch, the AP estimates iCircular will reach 5 million newspaper readers via their mobile devices. It hopes the audience will grow as more newspapers and advertisers join.

Newspaper Association of America chairman Mike Reed noted that newspaper circulars are still popular, providing a substantial base for integrating mobile offers: "Nearly 60% of adults use the paper inserts to plan their shopping and retailers rely on circulars as the one of the most successful methods of driving traffic to their stores."

Next story loading loading..