Facebook today announced that users in five test markets — Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco and Austin, Texas — will be able to subscribe to Deals and share them with their friends. (See image below.) Previously, Deals has been available only via Facebook's location-sharing service, Places, which displayed nearby offers from local merchants.
Nine vendors — Gilt City, Home Run, OpenTable, Pop Sugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, Reach Local and Zozi — are part of the program. A Facebook rep says that the offering will be expanded in coming weeks and months to include local businesses from those cities.
Facebook launched Deals in November 2010. Since then, millions of people have used the service, Emily White, director of local, told The Wall Street Journal in January.
Groupon Prepares Ad Blitz on Facebook
Meanwhile, Groupon announced Wednesday an exclusive agreement with AdParlor, which will manage the brand’s ad spending on Facebook. The deal will let Groupon run ads on Facebook’s right-hand column for a variety of campaigns, including “generic ads driving users to sign up for daily e-mails as well as deal-specific ads with a focus on driving sales,” according to a statement from AdParlor.
The agreement will also let Groupon micro-target ads using artificial intelligence technology, according to AdParlor. Thanks to the arrangement, Groupon expects to “significantly increase” its spending on Facebook, said Zac Goldberg, vice president of online marketing at Groupon, in a statement.
Can Groupon blunt Facebook’s inroads into its business with advertising? Either way, it seems like a win-win situation for Facebook. For Groupon, which has to contend with a slew of wannabe competitors, the picture is somewhat less rosy.