Where.com Acquires LocalGinger, Marking the Shift to Location-based Flash Sales
Daily deal campaigns will be available to merchants in a month at Where.com with acquisition of LocalGinger Inc., a player in the local group-buying category. LocalGinger has already built a following in small cities like North Shore, Mass., and Naperville, Ill., improving targeted technology for this kind of marketing. Details as to cash and stock paid for the acquisition were not disclosed.
The Flash-sales market is viewed as a very important sector for mobile marketing. LocalGinger’s social commerce platform has launched companies like Groupon Inc. and their advertisers to success by enabling merchants to create a type of deal on the spot. They can design banner ads, special-offer coupons and more via Where Ads platform which is a combination of Groupon and Google’s Adsense platform.
“A flash sale on a location-based service is an immense opportunity,” Doyle said. Special users of Where.com will be updated of an immediate dealing around their area. “LocalGinger found out how to make the cash register ring,” he added in the released statement.
Where.com operates via web and mobile applications, across 12 operating systems, serving as an immediate medium of information from merchants to consumers. It also provides updates about weather, news and restaurant views, finding the cheapest deals and the like.
This is a relatively new segment in hyperlocal deals which has generated huge successes like Groupon and Gilt. Where.com is not a big player in the sector yet but claims to have more than 3 million active users who avails their service at least 6 times on a monthly basis with a revenue of 50% quarterly increase in the course of five quarters. At the moment, Where.com has it’s eyes on Foursquare Inc. and Loopt Inc. seeing how they will be working on e-commerce opportunities. Flash in genral is growing a great deal in the mobile advertising, with Brightroll launching new pre-roll options as well.
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