Silicon Valley based Zixxo has launched a great service that I asked for last year (#4 on this list) – local coupons via RSS. This is a very big market. Last year, 323 billion coupons were distributed in the U.S., and of those 4.5 billion were actually used (Zixxo has more coupon stats here). If you are an advertiser you can try this out for free – Zixxo is not charging anything to advertisers for all of 2006. They have fairly robust tools for creating a coupon on the site, or advertisers can upload an existing offer. Coupons can be targeted locally or nationally, and there are other great features like “pause” to allow an advertiser to pull a coupon during busy periods. The eventual revenue model is to charge $0.50 per coupon printed (or click to an online offer) once they begin charging. Users can find coupons via search or browse on the site, or receive email or RSS alerts for the location and/or coupon categories of their choice. I’ve registered and will receive offers within an area around my home zip code (I chose 5 miles, but this is set by the user). In the long run, Zixxo should gather incredibly valuable information on consumer demand. Zixxo can then go to local or national retailers and offer to sell into this demand. For example, if Zixxo has ten thousand bay area users who are looking for deals on flowers, Zixxo can take this information to 1800Flowers and offer to sell a coupon into this demand stream. It’s “pull” advertising at its best. In a week or two Zixxo will launch open APIs to access coupon information, and they will offer a revenue share to partners once they begin charging. Zixxo has raised an angel round and has six employees. → Read More
