Coupons.com has launched “Brandcaster,” a contextual affiliate ad and coupon syndication service that will work something like AdSense. However revenue is earned not from clicks but “for every coupon printed” (as opposed to redeemed):
To start, Brandcaster will distribute coupons from about 200 brands to about 3,000 Web sites. The advertisers sending their coupons through Brandcaster include General Mills Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corp., Kraft Foods Inc. and Clorox Co. Within a year, Boal hopes to have 35,000 Web sites showing coupons through Brandcaster.
This is one interesting and potentially successful approach to solving the problem of online coupon distribution I complained about previously. Maybe the kind of coupon destination that I envisioned won’t come to pass because nobody’s got enough or the right mix of inventory. But I’m not yet totally convinced that it can’t be done.
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IAC’s Entertainment Publications is sold to MH Equity Investors for approximately $135 million. The company has been successful in the sale of its print publication but has never successfully developed an online offering, despite some effort to integrate its coupons into Citysearch and Ask City.
Screenwerk 
June 13, 2008 at 9:23 am
[…] a growing appetite for online coupons among consumers. Earlier I wrote about Coupons.com’s launch of Brandcaster, a coupon network, which distributes coupons across the […]
July 7, 2008 at 12:12 am
[…] heard of this until now. Targeting coupons based on interests should work incredibly well. (See Greg Sterling’s take on this here.) I would also tend to think it’s more likely to generate new trial than a […]
August 11, 2008 at 3:37 am
Couldn’t you just use a proxy and simulate prints? :-S
October 10, 2008 at 12:45 pm
[…] have recently been some interesting developments in online coupon sites and syndication (e.g., Brandcaster), but they’re still not at the level of prominence that I would expect. There remains an […]
October 10, 2008 at 6:54 pm
[…] have recently been some interesting developments in online coupon sites and syndication (e.g., Brandcaster), but they’re still not at the level of prominence that I would expect. There remains an […]