The acquisition was reported by several media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources close to the transaction as saying that Chase paid $35 million for the San Francisco company.

Bloomspot’s roughly 100 employees are expected to be offered jobs at the lender and payment processor.

Together, the two should be a good fit.

In general, banks and card issuers are looking for new revenue streams after the Durbin Amendment capped the amount that they could charge merchants on debit card transactions. Additionally, many banks have already begun sending targeted ads or deals to consumers based on their spending habits.

In a recent story, I named financial companies, including Visa, MasterCard and American Express, as potential acquirers for Groupon. However, one impediment with Groupon is its price. Even though its stock is down around 80 percent since its IPO, it would still cost billions to acquire.

The purchase today by Chase shows that there is an interest, just at a lower price point.

In a release, Jeff Kinder, president of Chase Offers, said, “Merchant partners are continually looking for ways to engage the right customers, and consumers have shown a clear interest in receiving offers from their favorite merchants. We believe Chase has a unique set of assets to bring these customers together and deliver highly targeted, relevant merchant offers at scale.”

Over the past few years, Bloomspot, which was led by former Yahoo executive Jasper Malcolmson, has tried hard to disassociate itself from both Groupon and LivingSocial. Even though on the surface it seems as though Bloomspot distributed similar offers, Malcolmson said he was focused on bringing merchants profitable customers rather than just getting new people in the door.

The company’s motto was, “Great Offers. Great Customers.”

But this deal may not have been so great for investors.

Last summer, Bloomspot raised $35 million in a second round of funding just before Groupon’s public offering. Prior to that, it raised nearly $11 million, for a total of about $46 million. Investors include InterWest Partners, Columbia Capital, Menlo Ventures and True Ventures, among others.

In an interview today, Jeff Holden, the company’s SVP of Product, explained that Groupon has mastered serendipity, but it has not always been good at giving people a place to shop for things they are already looking to buy.

“Groupon was the ultimate place where people would buy things that they didn’t know they were going to buy when they woke in the morning,” he said. “Our model was about talking to merchants, agreeing on a deal, then running the deal. Then it would disappear and be gone.”

Today, in New York and Chicago, consumers will start seeing a new homepage, where offers will be browsable and searchable — and won’t disappear. Instead, there will be a catalog of offers spanning categories such as food, spas, health, fitness, home and auto. So far, Groupon has amassed 27,000 deals in North America as part of the new direction for the company.

While this launch may seem like a relatively small move, it is just one aspect of the business that the company must nail if it wants to continue growing its traditional daily deals business. If Groupon is extremely successful in this endeavor, these deals will start appearing in search results on Google or Bing, much like a Yelp page or other local listings site. That does not happen today because of the temporary nature of Groupon’s current deals.

The evolution started about 18 months ago with the creation of Groupon Now, which got merchants to offer deals that could be used immediately. However, with the move being announced today, the Groupon Now category will go away. At first, consumers may not notice a drastic difference because they will continue getting emails, but when they visit the site, there will be a new layout. In the first image below, you’ll notice the new search bar and location field.

New Groupon homepage

When searching for “car,” more than a dozen offers are returned for auto detailing, car washes and repairs.

In the old format, which still exists for most cities in the U.S., there was no search bar, and when a consumer clicked on “all deals,” they would only surface a few options — not the entire database. Holden said merchants have not been nervous about adopting this format, even though it seems like surfacing the same deals every day would eventually hurt a merchant’s brand. “They’d much rather have a unit sold through Groupon than a seat go empty,” he said. “It makes perfect economic sense. The vast majority have participated immediately, and we aren’t hearing concerns from merchants over that.” He said merchants will also have the option of capping how many times a consumer can redeem a particular offer.

So far, Holden says, the new format is performing well. “We are seeing a significant lift from people who experience the ‘pull’ experience,” he said. “It will take time for people to discover it and for it to ramp up, but the immediate embracing of this shows that people were hungry for capability.”

For comparison, here’s a look at the Seattle homepage, which still has the old format:

Old Groupon Homepage

The services look a lot like Groupon and other daily-deal outfits. Small companies sign up for the sites, such as OrderWithMe , Rewardli and GroupPrice, and get email offers of limited-time deals, usually lasting a week or so. The sites negotiate those discounts with vendors that want a simple way to connect with lots of potential customers.

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In an interview, Rosenblum said that today was his first day at Drawbridge after working at Google for four and a half years.

In his new role as Drawbridge’s VP of Product, Rosenblum will be responsible for overseeing the company’s technology, which enables marketers to target users as they move from their computers to tablets and to mobile phones.

“Mobile is gaining share of minutes, so at some point it has to gain share of dollars,” Rosenblum said.

The company is trying to solve a problem, he said, that he was familiar with at Google. Google Offers sells discounts to consumers on everyday items, such as spa services or meals at restaurants, similar to Groupon. However, Google’s offering is slightly different because it is designed to help Google close the loop, so that it can show how online behavior — including Web searches — is dictating offline purchasing behavior. A key component of that is Google’s payment platform, called Google Wallet, which has struggled to gain consumer adoption.

While several members of the Google Wallet team have left, Google Offers has been more stable, even considering Rosenblum’s exit.

Rosenblum says his departure is not a reflection of the division’s success. “We’ve always positioned Google Offers as not competing directly with Groupon. We’ve built it as a closed loop ad platform,” he said. “I think we were wise to take a different tack and spend our engineering resources on that tack. Most small advertisers want to pay on CPA (cost per acquisition) basis, and I’m pretty proud that it’s as far along as it is.”

In May, Rosenblum announced that Google had started to integrate Groupon-like offers into Google Maps and that it was trying out other advertising models for coupons and rewards programs.

Now at Drawbridge, he said, he can help even small companies that don’t have Google-size resources increase revenue from mobile advertising by increasing their targeting abilities. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company is about two years old and has 21 employees. In May, Drawbridge’s founder and former Admob engineer Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan raised $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer.

Here’s the full release:

Eric Rosenblum, Former Google Director of Product, Joins Cross-Screen Advertising Startup Drawbridge

Mobile payments expert to lead product innovation for Drawbridge’s cross-screen advertising platform

SAN MATEO, Calif. – September 10, 2012 – Drawbridge, the leader in cross-screen mobile advertising, today announces its new VP of Product: Eric Rosenblum, former Google Offers Director of Product. Rosenblum brings over 16 years of experience in product innovation, mobile payments and entrepreneurial ventures and will be responsible for driving forward product development plans for Drawbridge’s cross-screen mobile ad platform.

Rosenblum spent over four years at Google as Director of Strategy and Operations and Director of Product. Prior to joining Google, Rosenblum was founder and CEO of Smartpay, a leading mobile payment company in China. He also served as GM of Greater China and Global Strategy GM for RealNetworks. Rosenblum started his career with the Boston Consulting Group in Hong Kong and Shanghai after receiving an MBA from MIT Sloan.

“Drawbridge’s opportunity is immense,” says Rosenblum. “10% of media time is now consumed on mobile, but mobile only attracts 1% of the ad spend. The team at Drawbridge has made tremendous progress developing the tools to close this gap and building the technology foundations to finally make targeting and attribution work across all mobile screens and devices. I am beyond excited to be joining this outstanding team for the challenge.”

Drawbridge has developed technology that is able to leverage targeting data across screens and across devices. Through Drawbridge’s sophisticated probabilistic and statistical inference models, brands get a unified view of their customers regardless of channel, screen, or device. Since launching in May, Drawbridge has onboarded major advertisers focused on driving cross-screen performance in the retail, travel, and entertainment verticals. Drawbridge has made its innovative platform publicly available to advertisers and publisher partners, who can sign up at www.drawbrid.ge.

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Drawbridge founder and former AdMob and Google scientist, leads the company with funding from premier venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

To learn more about Drawbridge or sign up for their service, visit: www.drawbrid.ge

About Drawbridge
Drawbridge developed the world’s first cross-screen ad technology, enabling marketers to reach their target audience across any screen and any device – smartphone, tablet or personal computer. Unlike web cookies or fingerprint-based solutions, Drawbridge leverages anonymous, non-personally identifiable information to serve ads to hundreds of millions of unique users around the world – regardless of what kind of device they happen to be using. Drawbridge is located in Silicon Valley and is backed by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins Caulfield and Byers.

I scan my phone to pay for a latte at Starbucks, I snap pictures of checks to make bank deposits. Once, I used it to buy a few screws at Home Depot without ever pulling out my credit card.

But this week, Apple officially announced its first steps into the payments space with Passbook, an application that electronically stores loyalty cards, gift cards, boarding passes, electronic movie tickets, coupons and more on the phone.

Passbook comes out this fall, and Apple hasn’t yet said if it will accept payments or store any credit card information. But based on several conversations I’ve had over the past week, nearly everyone expects that is where Apple is headed.

The truth, however, is that accepting payments is a lot trickier than it sounds. Transferring money responsibly between parties is extremely sensitive. Even for Apple, it could prove difficult to come up with a game changer that would be as elegant as they’d like it to be and make everyone happy.

Passbook

But, for now, Apple’s first step is Passbook.

The point of the application is to make it easier to keep track of gift cards, coupons, passes and tickets and other things that get lost in your wallet or on your phone.

Using Passbook, iPhone and iPod touch owners will be able to call up electronic bar codes on the screen to check in for a flight, get into a movie or redeem a coupon. They will also be able to see when coupons expire, pinpoint where their concert seats are or check the balance of a coffee loyalty card. The app uses location-based services too, so when a consumer is close to a movie theater or store, a ticket or relevant coupon will appear on the phone’s lock screen.

Several partners have already signed up for the program, including Target, Fandango, Starbucks, Amtrak, United Airlines and the W Hotel.

Ticket seller Fandango confirmed in a statement that, with Passbook, “moviegoers can bypass the box office at select theaters with their scannable ticket on their iPhone, and with location and time features, the Mobile Ticket will automatically be displayed for quick and convenient access as soon as the moviegoer arrives at the theater.”

As seamless as it sounds, both retailers and consumers will have to do some juggling to make it work.

Target and Starbucks, for example, have already upgraded their hardware at the point of sale to be able to read a bar code from the phone’s screen. And consumers will have to make a conscious effort to save their coupons and bar codes in the application, much like when they add an event to a calendar.

Already a payment provider

If Apple chooses to build more functionality into the app, it does have a few things going for it.

For instance, on Monday Apple said it has about 400 million iTunes accounts — meaning that the company has that many credit cards on file. To put that number in perspective, PayPal has about 100 million active accounts — a quarter of Apple’s reach.

Another benefit is that Apple owns the phone’s hardware and operating system, so if it needed to tweak something, such as integrating near field communication, it could easily do that in the next generation. NFC is often considered the linchpin to mobile payments because it would enable people to tap to pay at the register, without having to show a barcode.

Complexities abound

On the other hand, turning Passbook into a payments network will not be easy.

The simplest route would be to enable users to charge everyday purchases like groceries and gas to their account with a tap of their NFC-enabled phone. The approach would be similar to PayPal’s business, which allows people to check out online using the credit card it has on file.

But that’s not the kind of game changer that everyone is looking for from Apple.

In our digital lives, today’s consumers want more capabilities, such as being able to make charges to a variety of cards, monitor their account balances, pay bills, make returns and save receipts. Coupons and offers should also be part of the mix, based on a person’s interests.

In building an application that does all that, Google has faced several setbacks with its Wallet app, especially when it comes to partnering with the carriers, banks, retailers and handset makers. In particular, NFC has been slow to get off the ground, and carriers — including Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T — have blocked Google’s Wallet from appearing on Android phones.

PayPal has made slightly more progress, but it is still working out the kinks in the system. Currently, the company is focused on signing up lots of retailers so it can learn from real-life experiences, in order to make a big push in 2013.

Apple faces these same technology hurdles, and it would have to build a system that addresses the security needs of consumers while also complying with laws in every country in which it operated. The least of its problems may be figuring out a way to make money in payments — or at least not lose money.

Right now, Apple charges companies 30 percent each time they sell anything on iTunes.

That’s a much larger cut than what they could get away with if they extended it to retailers, who are used to paying around 2 percent. Of that much smaller percentage, Apple would still have to pay the processors, such as Visa and MasterCard.

There are other options, too

Since Apple clearly intends for the service to become one of its flagship applications — like Siri, FaceTime or Maps — how else might it address the payments business?

There are a few more options, based on what already exists in the market.

Instead of copying Google or PayPal, Apple could try to compete with Visa and MasterCard.

Better yet, it could steal a page from Square’s playbook. The San Francisco company, led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has developed a mobile application called “Pay with Square.” The app allows users to pay by giving the clerk their name at the register — no credit card or fancy NFC-equipped phone required. In advance of the payment, consumers would have to store their account information in the app and take a picture of themselves to make identifying them easy.

In addition, the store must have an iPad at the counter, so the salesperson can correctly identify people from their pictures.

The whole experience is pretty slick — just how Apple likes it. Plus, it could generate additional iPad sales. But there’s a catch. Without a critical mass of retailers on board with the program, consumers would not be able to reliably leave their house without a physical wallet.

Should companies be afraid?

The problem with not knowing what Apple has in store makes it impossible for companies to gauge whether they should be excited about the possibilities of Passbook, or whether they should be scared.

Scvngr’s Seth Priebatsch said that it’s not clear to him, either, but he’s willing to take the risk. He plans to integrate his company’s LevelUp application into Passbook, which operates similarly to Square.

“My feeling is that Passbook is very much like [Apple's] Game Center, in that it’ll be a nice additional distribution channel for all mobile payment/loyalty app developers,” Priebatsch said. “Of course, that could come back to bite us all when — not if — Apple bakes in their own mobile payment solution.”

WhaleShark’s SVP of Mobile John Faith also said that his company would consider integrating RetailMeNot — a coupon app it launched this week on the iPhone — into Passbook.

“Our value for companies like Apple, Google, PayPal and Bing is a partnership where our coupon content can become a part of similar consumer offerings — making saving while shopping with a mobile phone a more seamless experience,” Faith said.

If you take the literal translation of the word “passbook,” it seems to be a play on two words: “Passport” and “checkbook.”

It may be inevitable that Apple enters the payments space, but whether it pulls it off is another thing entirely.

The Atlanta-based company’s mobile app tries to be a resource to consumers who are looking for local merchants and events, sort of like the Web’s original CitySearch service from years ago — except that it’s on mobile. The app also distributes coupons to restaurants, but instead of charging consumers for the deals, like Groupon does, they are free, and merchants pay a flat rate to Scoutmob each time one is redeemed.

Investors in the company’s second round include AOL Ventures, New Atlantic Ventures, Capital Broadcasting, Cox Enterprises and Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer. To date, Scoutmob has raised $5 million, which means that even if it wanted to, it doesn’t have the resources to go up against Groupon and LivingSocial.

In an interview, Scoutmob co-founder Michael Tavani said the company gets lumped into the daily deals category, but said that from day one, “we tried to differentiate ourselves and to be more of a mobile company.”

So far, the strategy has worked.

The app, which is available free on iOS, BlackBerry and Android, has 1.2 million users who have redeemed one million offers. To date, the company has launched in 10 cities, with varying success rates. Some markets, like Seattle, don’t have many deals yet, while other cities, like Atlanta or Washington, D.C., are used more.

Because of its emphasis on mobile, the company was also able to to score a partnership with payment processing company First Data Corporation.

“It’s crazy, we are a two-and-a-half year-old company, and every week we have the largest payment companies in the world contacting us,” Tavani said. ”They are worried that if they don’t have mobile engagement, then what do they have?”

First Data processes about 55 percent of all transactions in the U.S., and will help Scoutmob close the loop of offering a discount, making a purchase and earning loyalty points.

The new funding will be used to support the company’s next wave of product development, which will include building out a mobile rewards program with the help of First Data and other payment companies it signs up.

Tavani said it will work like this: When users make a purchase at a Scoutmob location using a credit card, they’ll accrue points automatically. Once enough points have been accumulated, they can be redeemed at any Scoutmob retail location.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs, which require consumers to go to the same coffee shop 10 times in order to earn a free coffee, Scoutmob will let consumers earn and redeem points by visiting any merchant in its network. It’s similar to frequent flyer programs, where miles can be earned at a variety of merchants and then redeemed at a handful of airlines.

“We want to be the equivalent of an airline reward program, but for local,” Tavani said. “That’s exactly what we want to be.”

Scoutmob has landed in a sector spanning local businesses and mobile payments, which is ripe from innovation and extremely crowded by well-funded start-ups and massively large incumbents. But Tavani argues that it’s a level playing field.

“There’s going to be multiple players and lots of winners,” he said. “Groupon and LivingSocial are two with a gigantic lead. But we can go out and visit merchants today — there’s no one preventing us from having those conversations.”

American Express and Zynga are rolling out a rewards program today that will allow players to earn virtual currency when they spend money in the real world.

FarmVille fans willing to jump through a number of hoops, including signing up for a Zynga-branded prepaid card from American Express, will earn in-game currency, similarly to how consumers earn free airline miles for every dollar spent on an airline-issued credit card.

The rewards program will first roll out in Zynga’s FarmVille game and then will expand to CityVille, CastleVille and other titles over time.

The partnership is smart for American Express since it is working hard to promote Serve, its alternative payment service that is targeting a wider demographic that goes beyond its core business user.

“It opens up tremendous opportunities to address segments of the market that we weren’t able to address with traditional credit or charge products, including the youth or underserved markets,” said Dan Schulman, American Express’s President of Enterprise Growth.

By partnering with Zynga, American Express will be able to pitch the card to a lot of new users.

The two companies started implementing the program five days ago, by offering FarmVille players the chance to visit a Serve-branded farm, where they can earn a virtual tiger. In less than a week, Schulman reports that already 500,000 people have “liked” Serve and have received the tiger.

While FarmVille is one of Zynga’s older properties, it is still one of its most popular, attracting 4.5 million unique users a day.

As I said earlier, it takes a number of steps to sign up.

First, FarmVille fans who visit the Serve farm will be prompted to plant a virtual Serve Money Tree on their farm. Then, they can register to receive a Zynga Serve co-branded prepaid card in the mail. Next, they’ll have to link the card to a bank account, debit card, credit card or cash using a GreenDot MoneyPak.

Only when all the steps are completed will they then be able to use the Serve card anywhere American Express is accepted.

Initially, American Express will reward a consumer’s first five purchases of $25 or more, but over time it expects to expand the program.

Starting later this year, Schulman said the Zynga Serve Rewards program will be able to link to deals inside of the game that can be redeemed in person. For instance, Starbucks could award consumers who have planted coffee crops a chance to redeem a coupon inside the store. Because the offer is linked to the Serve card, the discount will be redeemed automatically and consumers won’t have to remember to print out the coupon.

“It’s a closed loop for Zynga players,” Schulman said. “It’s so very different than what anyone else has done.”

Zynga’s CMO Jeff Karp said the program is not replacing the company’s current rewards program, but rather represents an extension of it. “Our goal is to build and scale the blurring of the lines between the virtual world and the physical world,” he said.

He compared it to other promotions that Zynga has done where it worked with brands, such as 7-11 and Frito Lay.

He said during those promotions, consumers were able to purchase bags of chips or other items, which had codes that could be redeemed inside FarmVille or other games. In those deals, consumers were obviously able to make the mental leap from buying something in the physical world to redeeming credits in the virtual world. Karp said the promotions experienced a redemption rate that was five to 10 times industry averages.

“What’s appealing to these brands is our 292 million monthly uniques, which is providing them with the reach of TV with the effectiveness of online and gaming,” he said.

Google has started to integrate Groupon-like offers into Google Maps, and it’s not stopping there.

Eric Rosenblum, Google’s director of product management for Google Offers, said consumers will start seeing offers for restaurants, spas and other services on a variety of Google properties soon.

“Any Google properties that have a strong location, social or commerce component are strong candidates,” he said.

Yesterday, Google started off its integration efforts with Google Maps 6.7. Now, consumers who use maps on Android devices will start receiving offers for nearby deals and coupons when conducting a search for a local business.

The announcements also hint at how Google sees the daily deals business evolving, which, as it turns out, is different from either Groupon or LivingSocial.

Rosenblum explained the search company is narrowing in on three types of offers: Daily deals, coupons and rewards.

A daily deal provides a huge discount to the consumer who pays for it upfront. In that scenario, the deal is used as a lead generator and may pull in customers from all across town. In contrast, a coupon is free and may give consumers a couple bucks off their next purchase, providing an additional “nudge” to pick one restaurant over the other.

And, finally, the third approach offers a loyalty program to merchants that will keep consumers returning through the use of rewards. Google’s rewards program is currently being piloted in the Bay Area.

Rosemblum said as the business evolves, merchants will be expected to pay different rates for the three types of services, but in the end, they will all end up with a traditional ad model. Under a cost per action approach, or CPA, merchants will pay Google only after a purchase has been made, and will pay based only on the value of that consumer.

During a trial period, merchants aren’t being charged anything for posting deals on Google Maps, but in the future, Rosenblum said, it’s logical to assume that a prepaid deal, which offers a deep discount and pulls in a customer from across town, will have a higher CPA than a coupon. “A nudge is different,” he said.

One aspect of the announcement yesterday that Rosenblum is completely sold on is delivering deals and offers based on a consumer’s location — it’s why Google isn’t rolling out deals on PC-based maps yet.

In March, LivingSocial announced it was no longer focusing on distributing location-based deals on mobile phones because it wasn’t working.

Rosenblum disagrees: “I think it will take awhile. You have to change consumer behavior, but Google mobile maps is something that people are using anyway. There are people trained on that behavior.”

He added, “This is an area where we will be patient. We are sold on the logic that when you are out and about, that you will be looking for local businesses. … We will continue down this path.”

Here’s how it works:

The company, which lets users alert their friends to their location by “checking in” via smartphone from coffee shops, bars and other locations, revealed for the first time that it plans to let merchants buy special placement for promotions of personalized local offers in July in a redesigned version of its app. All users will be able to see the specials, but must check into the venue to redeem them.

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Veit Dengler will become senior vice president of international operations, replacing Marc Samwer, who had joined the company as part of its 2010 acquisition of German firm Citydeal.

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Others think (non-iPad) tablets and daily deals.

According to new consumer data from PriceGrabber.com, topping the list of electronically-oriented Valentine’s Day gifts purchased over the past couple days are the HP Slate 500 tablet — remember that one? — and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF 101 tablet. The results, which will be released in full later today, are based on merchant referrals through PriceGrabber, a Kayak-like, Experian-owned site for comparative shopping.

Also in PriceGrabber’s Valentine’s Top 3: A 55-inch 3-D LED TV from Samsung; with a price range of $1,995 to $3,528, this love offering is probably best for someone you’re truly committed to.

This latest report only factors in purchases made on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Over the weekend, Apple’s 64 gigabyte iPhone 4S was one of the most popular purchases, alongside that big Samsung TV.

The shopping survey also indicates that the daily deals sector might get some love this year, with 42 percent of shoppers saying they plan to use an offer from Groupon or LivingSocial for purchasing gifts.

In my own inbox, I’ve gotten some pretty interesting deal offers over the past few weeks — including (but not limited to) his-and-hers massages, half-off flower bouquets, and a “bargain”-priced private dinner at Le Cirque (no sign yet of last year’s shooting-range deal for Valentine’s Day).

Despite the lean toward coupons — and in spite lingering economic woes — the majority of U.S. consumers plan to spend the same amount on this Valentine’s Day as they did last Feb. 14, according to PriceGrabber’s report.

(Image credit: Harle/Flickr)

The partnership understandably ended once Microsoft’s big search rival, Google, acquired The Dealmap in August.

“We can confirm that Bing is no longer partnering with The Dealmap and is now partnering with local and daily deal aggregator 8coupons,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We’re excited about the partnership with 8coupons and to be able to offer our customers access to great deals and discounts from across the Web — all in one place.”

A spokesperson for 8coupons also confirmed the partnership, adding that it started to replace The Dealmap a couple of weeks ago.

Rather than build a Groupon copycat as Google and Amazon have done, Microsoft has decided to partner with an aggregator that collects offers from various providers around the Web. Deals delivered by 8coupons come from Restaurant.com, Yelp, LivingSocial and GiltCity, among many others, as shown on the Bing Deals homepage.

Google’s purchase of The Dealmap was relatively small, especially compared to its failed $6 billion offer to buy Groupon. So far, The Dealmap is being used for the underpinnings of a pilot project that Google Offers has rolled out in the Bay Area.

In San Francisco, Google works with more than a dozen deal providers so that it can offer a variety of deals every day. It believes that in order to have relevant offers for all types of consumers, you need a lot of good deals, not just one a day.

Daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit reports that the daily deal industry in North America experienced marginal growth in November, as the major sites were adversely affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The number of deals offered increased only 1 percent while total industry gross billings grew by 2 percent during the month.

The largest provider, Groupon, saw the biggest decline.

Groupon grew 6 percent in November, but experienced a double-digit decline during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

Yipit bases its estimates on the sales of vouchers, which it tracks closely. Although Groupon no longer reveals exact sales data on its site, Yipit maintains that it is still able to make fair predictions based on historical data and industry insights.

The daily-deal declines were in stark contrast to the Black Friday experience of online retailers, which saw sales increase to $816 million on the day after Thanksgiving. ComScore said it was the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011, representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010.

The holiday declines occurred despite ambitious programs by both Groupon and LivingSocial, which tried to take advantage of the heavy retail season.

Groupon stepped up its marketing efforts through “Grouponicus,” a holiday shop selling local gifts, deals and travel getaways.

LivingSocial’s Black Friday efforts included offering deals for 20 national brands, including gift cards from Electronic Arts, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Skype and BlueNile.com. LivingSocial even launched a national TV campaign and radio spots to promote the deals.

But Yipit says those efforts didn’t pay off.

For the seven-day period ended Nov. 28, LivingSocial’s gross billings were down 30 percent and 19 percent compared to the two previous periods. And, because of the lower-priced national deals, the average size of its deal price fell to $28 in November from $32 a month earlier.

Yipit did not try to explain why the drops occurred around the holidays, except that they are similar to other periods, such as the Fourth of July.

But the patterns could be compared to social gaming space, which saw its usage sink during the holidays because people were not at work.

A secondary factor may be that more traditional retailers are known for Black Friday offers for others, while daily deals have historically been looked at as items you buy for yourself, and are not necessarily thought of as gifts.

Finally, Yipit said following Groupon and LivingSocial, Travelzoo, AmazonLocal and Google Offers ranked as the third, fourth and fifth largest national providers in November.

No word yet on how daily deals performed in the lead-up to Christmas in December.

The start-up, called Mobeam, got the endorsement of such a large company because of a major glitch in the couponing system: Most scanners in grocery stores cannot read a bar code displayed on the screen of a cellphone.

“Couponing has been one of the tried and tested tools to incentivize consumers to try our products,” said Jeff Weedman, P&G’s VP of global business development. “Ads around the world have moved digital, but there was a hole in the system. You can deliver coupons digitally, but frankly our customers weren’t happy about it. It doesn’t scan at most grocery scanners, and it slowed the system down because the checkout person would have to plug in the numbers manually.”

In October, Cupertino, Calif.-based Mobeam raised $4.9 million in capital to solve this problem, developing technology that coverts bar code data into a beam of light that can be read by most checkout-counter scanners.

A host of applications are already available for download on many smartphones — Starbucks has been one of the shining examples. Its application, which allows customers to pay at the register, has enabled 26 million mobile payment transactions this year alone.

But few people realize that Starbucks had to replace all of its scanners in its stores for the app to work.

Today, couponing is $3.7 billion segment of the consumer packaged goods market in North America, with more than 300 billion coupons distributed every year.

Increasingly, they are going digital, too.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in investments have been made this year in the distribution of coupons online and via mobile. Most recently, WhaleShark raised $150 million. Others include CouponCabin.com, which raised $54 million; and Coupons.com, which secured $230 million in two megarounds.

The prospect of finding coupons online and saving them to the phone, which can then be scanned at the register, is appealing. Currently, the main two options are to clip coupons from the newspaper, or to print coupons that were found online.

But don’t expect to be able to start using Mobeam’s technology tomorrow.

Mobeam will have to convince phone manufacturers to integrate its technology into their hardware. It says it is expecting phones to start shipping as soon as next year.

(Photo credit: sdc2027)

The shell company has grown through acquisition, picking up eight sites in the past two years, including RetailMeNot.com and Deals.com in the U.S., and VoucherCodes.co.uk in the U.K. In all, the company claims to attract 100 million unique visitors a year, most of whom are seeking discounts on anything from a gallon of milk to a pair of shoes.

This year, WhaleShark expects to be profitable on revenues exceeding $70 million.

The company’s CEO, Cotter Cunningham, told AllThingsD in an interview that the company is a classic roll-up. Its first $150 million in capital was spent on acquisitions, and that’s how it intends to spend its next $150 million.

Investors in the round include J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Institutional Venture Partners. Existing investors include Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Adams Street Partners and Google Ventures.

To date, the company has raised nearly $300 million in two rounds.

“We are actively pursuing a number of acquisitions, and it will take us another year to spend the money,” Cunningham said.

The coupon-clipping business, while ancient, has gotten its sexy back in recent months, thanks to the success of Groupon and the consumer’s general shift in thinking to look for deals online rather than in the Sunday newspaper. VCs have recognized this behavior change and have gravitated to it like a teenager to Justin Bieber.

CouponCabin.com of Whiting, Ind., raised $54 million, Coupons.com secured $230 million in two megarounds, and CouponTrade.com has secured a more modest $2.4 million in capital. I’m sure there are many more that I’m forgetting.

Cunningham says a number of things are driving the trend, and while Groupon’s popularity has helped, WhaleShark is not a daily deals site.

“Groupon went out and created a whole new market with a big sales force,” he said. “They’ve done an amazing job of creating a new market focused on an interesting aspect of the coupon that didn’t exist two or three years ago. Our focus is more on taking the existing couponing model and moving it online.”

Essentially, it’s the newspaper circular that WhaleShark is going after. ”I’m a huge fan of newspapers, but yes, ultimately that’s what we are doing,” Cunningham ’fessed up.

Today, it has aggregated about half a million coupons, from 130,000 merchants, on its site. Many of them are uploaded by consumers, who received a free shipping code in an email from the Gap or Old Navy. Customers have self-reported to WhaleShark that they save about $20 on average per transaction.

The business won’t require even half the sales staff of Groupon. Today, WhaleShark has about 100 people at its Austin headquarters, and 40 people in the U.K. Cunningham anticipates adding 50 to 75 employees in Austin, and doubling numbers abroad.

The company earns a commission from about 10 percent of the offers it distributes on the site. Additionally, it hopes to support the sites through advertising as it attracts a large audience.

[Photo credit: sdc2027.]

Both applications will enable consumers to shop online or see what’s available locally. Orders can be shipped or picked up.

The apps are being released ahead of the end-of-the-year shopping frenzy, which many retailers are hoping will be one of the busiest mobile commerce events ever.

“As customers use more smartphones and tablets, the Wal-Mart customer is doing the same thing,” said Gibu Thomas, the company’s SVP of mobile and digital.

That’s true, and it’s scary for big retailers. Increasingly, consumers are scanning barcodes to get reviews and compare prices before deciding whether to make a purchase or go somewhere else.

Thomas said the apps are not a defensive move against this trend, but rather a way to give consumers what they want. ”We want to know how we can help our customers shop better with us, which will make them shop more with us,” he argued.

Wal-Mart’s first iPad app launched about a week ago.

It lets people browse inventory in their local store, while also seeing what else is available online. Instead of duplicating the online experience, they’ve created categories. For instance, in the home section, shoppers will browse a catalog-like experience, where they’ll see pots and pans, stereo speakers and outdoor fireplaces without any additional information.

To see prices or more details, a user will have to choose an item.

The major new feature of the iPhone application, which originally launched more than a year ago, will be a shopping list with integrated voice dictation using Nuance’s speech recognition, and discounts through a partnership with Coupons.com.

The app will be available as soon as it receives Apple’s approval.

This app gets pretty close to what many companies have been describing as mobile commerce — minus near field communication that would allow users to tap and pay. And, at Wal-Mart’s scale, this is truly something for the mass market.

Thomas said 90 percent of consumers who come to a Wal-Mart store on a weekly basis come with a shopping list.

The iPhone shopping list feature will allow people to enter items manually using predictive text. Type “cheddar,” and you’ll see a number of cheese brands and the price of each item.

Consumers will also be able to enter items using their voice. When Thomas demonstrated it to me, the app was fairly accurate. It recognized orange juice and sour cream as one item each, but Campbell’s soup came up as two.

Because the real price is listed, budget-conscious shoppers can decide how much to pay for groceries before even getting to the store. Coupons from Coupons.com will also be integrated into the shopping experience. You might type in “yogurt,” but decide on Yoplait for the discount.

For some stores, Wal-Mart has given consumers the ability to find out what aisle the items are in from the phone. That capability will roll out to more stores as it comes out of beta. Eventually, the information could be overlaid on a map to show the most efficient route for getting all of your items.

Thomas also said the company anticipates being able to store shoppers’ receipts electronically, so that items purchased will be uploaded to an individual’s device, making it easier to create shopping lists in the future.

“We think of your mobile phone as your loyalty card. We don’t have cards but we think of it in the sense that you can use your phone to surface real-time discounts,” he said.

The applications were built by @WalMartLabs in Silicon Valley, which serves as the technology hub for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.

CouponCabin.com of Whiting, Ind., is the latest online coupon company to raise capital. The company has raised $54 million in its first round of funding.

The round closely follows competitors Coupons.com, which has secured $230 million in two megarounds; and CouponTrade.com, which has secured a more modest $2.4 million in capital.

CouponCabin’s round was led by JMI Equity.

CouponCabin says the cash will go toward growing its consumer audience and the relationships it has with merchants, including local businesses and groceries. Today, it has deals on its site from such brand-name properties as Dell, RadioShack, Target.com and Best Buy; and exclusives from lesser-known retailers like AutoAnything, Just My Size, BuyCostumes and Think Geek.

It says the main difference between it and its competitors is that CouponCabin tests the deals to make sure that coupons will work, checking up to three times a week that the offer is still valid. If it isn’t, they’ll give the consumer a $25 gift card.

The site, which was founded in 2003, works with more than 3,500 stores nationwide and has presented more than 100,000-plus offers this year alone. In addition, the company said it has generated $500 million in online retail sales for its merchants and has saved its users more than $300 million since 2003.

It’s a far cry from the $30 million round that Coupons.com announced on Monday, which followed a $200 million round in June.

But both companies are following the same premise that offline activities, like couponing, are moving online.

In particular, CouponTrade is targeting the secondary market, where consumers can go to trade both daily deal vouchers from providers, such as Groupon and LivingSocial, and gift cards from retailers, such as Macy’s, Walmart and Old Navy, so they don’t go to waste. So far, it lists inventory for 15 U.S. markets.

The secondary market is already fairly competitive, and in general, they are a bit rogue. They are not working with the major deal providers to prevent fraud, and instead rely on cash-back guarantees, which are often negotiated through payment providers, like PayPal, if a voucher ends up being used or not legitimate.

Others in the space include DealsGoRound, CoupRecoup, CityPockets and Lifesta. Since the company deals in selling unwanted gift cards as well, it is also competing against fairly established players such as PlasticJungle.

CouponTrade said investors include Jeff Cantalupo of Listen, a consulting firm in Chicago, and the Bousis family, who owns and operates the Chicago grocery chain, Cermak Fresh Market.

Ironically, the event took place at Terranea, which was the same resort where Google demonstrated its Wallet and Offers platforms at the D Conference only three months ago.

Since then, not only has the space heated up, with all the major players announcing their plans, but so has the rivalry between the two Bay Area companies. PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google for stealing trade secrets and key employees, and now they will compete for the attention of merchants and consumers.

In an interview, PayPal’s president, Scott Thompson, explained how the online payments leader was different, and why he believes the space will take off “faster than you ever imagined.”

In demonstrations earlier in the day, PayPal showed me a number of different scenarios, including using a phone number and PIN code to replace swiping a credit card at the payment terminal. It is also integrating check-in capabilities to its mobile application and location-based services to identify nearby stores or restaurants. What it won’t be doing is relying on near-field communication technology or implementing an offer network, unlike Google’s approach to the market.

Thomson, in his thick Boston accent, was eager to share his side of the story, after hearing so many other competitors go before him. Here are some highlights from the interview:

What problem are you solving?

Thompson: An offline merchant today is seeing slow to no growth. It’s tough. E-commerce companies are still growing, and if you have both, you are seeing slow to no growth.

First, we know merchants are worried about consumers coming to you from all different ways — online, in-person, mobile, etc. Multichannel retailing is real for them.

Second, retailers are asking “Who is the customer?” If you visit the site, we know. There’s a wealth of information about them. In offline, they don’t even know you are in the store.

You are battling the competition with your hands behind your back. The question is “How do I close the loop? How do I know that Tricia’s here?” Our solution does close that loop.

What about NFC? In the four presentations I saw, it wasn’t used once.

Thompson: We are not embracing technology, we are solving the problem of what can I do today. It’s hard for me to speak [about NFC] until there are standards. You can’t ask retailers to implement three to five standards.

We can’t be so bold or arrogant to think that you’ll adopt to the standards we’ve created. If we said “Throw away your terminals and get a new one, or buy a new phone” — no one has that level of influence and pull to say “You’ll have to adopt to the standards we’ve created.” … We will work with the new and the old.

If we only built something that worked with this phone, this bank, and this network and NFC, you might address 50 people out of the 350 million people in the U.S. We hope that all 350 million people use what we are doing today.

You boldly predicted recently that by the end of 2015, digital money will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. Some people think you are nuts!

Thompson: This wave is going to happen faster than you think. If every consumer can pay with PayPal with a mobile phone number and a PIN, then I don’t ever have to reach and find this [Thompson pulls his money clip out of his pocket].

Why is that a possibility? There’s lots of reasons!

The value to the merchant is compelling, and the other thing that’s true is that there’s been a lot of compression of credit. A whole lot of people don’t have credit cards, and there’s a higher number of debit transactions. That’s an important change, if your debit card is compromised. The bad guys will get your money. I need more security than ever before. So, will it happen? Will it be fast?

It will be faster than you ever imagined. The one that wins will be the wallet that lives with you everywhere.

How important is this intiative to PayPal? It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in acquisitions to get to this point.

Thompson: At analyst day, we said we would double our business by 2013, and those numbers don’t take into account any revenues from this point-of-sales initiative we are working on. This is going beyond to the next three-year commitment.

We’ll see revenues next year, but we are planting the seeds now [for 2014]. We said revenues would total $6 [billion] to $7 billion in 2013. To continue to grow at the same rate in 2014, you better do things now. We see an opportunity. We see technology changing, and now is the time to invest.

Just because you aren’t using NFC right away, doesn’t mean you won’t have a steep adoption curve. You’ll have to sign up offline merchants and get consumers on board.

Thompson: Our work is hard, and the relationships we’ll forge will be hard, too. You’ll see next year, when we formally announce our partners, that they are very big merchants.

[On the consumer side] If merchants see value, and integrate it and push it, consumers will use it. It will become a natural thing for you to use it in the grocery story or the pharmacy. You’ll be able to use it for everyday spending — that’s age-old logic. If the companies with the most foot traffic use it, it will be adopted.

So, it’s not for the mom-and-pop coffee shop?

Thompson: It’s where you are most frequently visiting.

Let’s talk about the competition. There’s American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Google and others, like Square, all coming up with different mobile payment strategies.

Thompson: I love it! I actually do!

It reinforces that the opportunity is big. I find it humorous that they find it a novelty. It wasn’t long ago — after all these years of them saying that no one needed a [digital] wallet — that they are saying that the wallet is now important and we better have one.

Besides, this is not unique to PayPal, but we play better the more sophisticated the competitor is. It’s remarkable how competitive our organization is.

Other payment providers are rolling out wallet technology for the chance to offer coupons or offers to the consumers — which could be a lucrative local advertising strategy. Will you be doing the same?

Thompson: In subsequent releases, merchants will be able to do things in the wallet, like offer coupons, but it is not our intention to compete in offers. We are doing payments.

I talked to a major retailer recently that said they’d find it a conflict if the payments provider offered discounts, rather than the retailer being the one to own the relationship with the consumer.

Thompson: That’s where we are different. The others are about coupons and advertising. We are about payments. That’s where 110 percent of our focus is. I believe we have this right. This will be a really big phenomenon in the multichannel world. We are in the business to help merchants grow their business. We are not trying to take the customer relationship away from them.

If we do our job right, all of our businesses will grow.