Here’s the company’s release and here’s Bloomberg:
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet and media company assembled by billionaire Barry Diller, said fourth-quarter profit fell 98 percent after the company wrote down the value of its entertainment coupon division.
Net income from continuing operations declined to $2.69 million, or 1 cent a share, from $119.5 million, or 35 cents, a year earlier. Sales increased 7.8 percent to $1.82 billion, below the $1.9 billion estimated by analysts and the slowest pace in a year.
The IAC division that houses Ask grew revenues 46%. But it’s very strange that Entertainment is performing so poorly. Consumers love coupons but, of course, the company and its product are not optimized for the Internet. And the subscription business model will eventually come under threat from online sources.
According to a forecast I’ve done, online coupons will account for 5% of all coupons distributed in the U.S. by 2010. And the value of online coupons redeemed (locally) will be $2.28 billion (out of a total “face value” of just over $16 billion for all online coupons).
Thus there’s a big opportunity that hasn’t been captured by anyone yet. It will also extend to mobile.
Screenwerk 
February 6, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Online coupons are certainly poised for tremendous growth. I believe that the market is bifurcated into two primary segments. The Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) segment is led by the Free Standing Inserts in newspapers and its online equivalent from Coupons.com. CPG is tough online because it leverages third-party redemption (e.g. Clorox offers a coupon but you don’t redeem it with Clorox, you redeem it with Safeway or some supermarket). Then there is local. Currently the offline leaders are newspapers and direct mail. The online leader (IMHO) is ZiXXo. The biggest challenge for local online couponing is low cost high-volume advertiser acquisition.
I believe that Greg is absolutely correct, and possibly conservative in his market research. This is a huge market and it is poised for significant growth.
February 7, 2007 at 12:43 am
Traditionally “online coupons” are meant to be used online at websites, not distributed online which clouds the water of an “online coupon”.
If you are referring to printable coupons, Zixxo works. They are relatively new to the coupon vertical. Many sites competing for local have been around 5 years or longer, Coolsavings, Coupons.com, Valpak.
If in need of coupons to use online (website coupon codes), Quicktoclick.com is the best site I’ve found so far.