Google Quietly Launches...

Google today announced its latest update for Google Maps for Android with support for Google Offers. One interesting piece of this announcement that stood out was that Google Maps for Android users now get access to free Google Offers like a free coffee or dessert. Turns out, that’s actually just a small part of a wider update to Google Offers. Merchants across the U.S. – including towns where Google’s pre-paid offers haven’t launched yet – can now use a new self-service interface to create these free offers. We talked to Google Offers’ director of product management Eric Rosenblum about these changes earlier today. According to Rosenblum, there are three major pieces to today’s announcement: a new way for users to use Offers, a new way for merchants to use it, and expanded distribution of offers through Maps for Android. Until now, Google and most of its competitors in this market have focused on pre-paid offers. With this new free offering, Google wants to give merchants more opportunities to get new customers to their stores. Store owners can use a new self-service interface to set specific times for when and how long an offer should be valid. This new interface also gives merchants access to stock photography and other tools to fine-tune their messages. The coupons can be for money off, a percentage discount or a free product or gift. This is pretty similar to what Groupon is doing with Groupon Now , the difference being that this is for free coupons and not for pre-paid offers. As Rosenblum put it, this is basically a way to give shoppers “a gentle nudge” to come and try out a new store, coffee shop or restaurant. For potential customers, this means that they can now use the Google Maps for Android app (no word on whether this feature will come to other platforms anytime soon) to find these new offers and save them. For users who opt in to this, the app will also alert them whenever there’s a nearby offer.

Facebook Testing “Offer...

Facebook has a plan to squeeze more ad dollars out of ecommerce sites and anyone else selling products on the web. It’s quietly testing a new version of its Offers coupons that can be redeemed at online stores, not just at physical shops . Sources clued us in and Facebook has now confirmed with me that users will see Offers in the news feed, ads, and Sponsored Stories that feature a promo code or special link to click through for a discount on off-site purchases. Similar to how the existing version of Offers lead to foot traffic and revenue for brick-and-mortar stores , big brands with web stores, ecommerce hubs, and celebrities with merch to sell could soon use Offers to drive sales. Coupons like “Take $5 Off A Purchase Of $50 Or More” can produce real return on investment. So while they’re free to run, businesses will pay Facebook to show their Offers to more people. This is why you can’t judge Facebook’s future earning potential by today. The social network has plenty of revenue cards up its sleeve. Facebook is only testing Ecommerce Offers with a small number of clients, but if successful it could roll out to the self-serve interface the same way Brick-and-Mortar Offers did last week. It ran a smaller test of a predecessor to Offers called “Coupons” in December , as Inside Facebook reports. There’s no time table for when Ecommerce Offers could become publicly available. Ecommerce Offers opens the coupon product to more than just your local cafe and brands with physical locations. That’s crucial for Facebook as many of the site’s most popular Pages  don’t have brick-and-mortar stores or also have web stores. Here’s a few offers you might see soon: $25 off your Walmart.com purchase of $150 or more Free Bart plush doll with The Simpsons DVD purchase at the Fox Shop $5 off the new Lady Gaga album at her web store 20% off Manchester United merchandise on the team’s website $15 discount on Converse All-Star shoes if you buy two pairs online together Ecommerce Offers will be even easier for businesses to adopt than Brick-and-Mortar Offers that cashiers have to be trained to redeem. Most ecommerce sites already have a place to enter promo codes at checkout. Facebook could provide a single, unlimited discount code if a businesses wanted users to be able to share it. Or Facebook could generate a unique, single-use code for each user that sees an Offer if businesses want to make it “fans only” and encourage people to Like their Page. Codes could be distributed via the news feed, or users could be required to give a business their email address and receive the code there. Above is a screenshot from Inside Facebook’s Brittany Darwell from when online purse shop Kate Spade tested the product last month with email delivery of a promo code. Alternatively, users could click through a special Offer URL to have the discount pre-applied to their shopping cart. Beyond organic news feed distribution, businesses can pay to buy Sponsored Stories that promote their Offers to friends of those who’ve claimed them. These ads appear in the Facebook.com sidebar, or the web or mobile news feed, and would say “Josh Constine claimed an offer for $10 Kanye West concert tickets” in hopes of getting my friends to do the same. Businesses can also buy standard sidebar ads displaying their offers, and layer †additional targeting parameters on either type of ad. For years, small businesses, bands, and brands have been buying ads to increase their Page Like counts, but how these fans translated to sales was unclear. They could send these subscribers marketing messages through the news feed, but convincing users to click off-site and away from their friends was difficult. Meanwhile they could pay for ad clicks, but those didn’t necessarily turn into downstream purchases. Facebook Ecommerce Offers bring ROI into focus. You pay for ads or fans to get more views of your Offer, and users spend while redeeming them. Facebook will need to make sure Ecommerce Offers is successful, and even then there’s no time table for when the product will become publicly available to businesses. For now, brick-and-mortar merchants can use the self-serve tool to create their own offers . [Image Credits: SayingItSocial ,  Ryan Spoon , 

Capital One Acquires Mo...

San Francisco-based  BankOns , an early stage mobile startup, has been acquired by Capital One and will now be incorporated into Capital One’s Digital Labs . This very young company was founded in summer 2010, and launched in May 2011, with the aim of offering tools that would allow banks to reward users based on their geo-location and their purchase history. Investors in the company include Dave McClure’s 500 Startups and financial consultant Mark Greenough , who had put in during the friends and family seed round. Neither the amount of the seed round nor the deal terms were disclosed. However, McClure says that the deal was a quick acquisition, and was good for 500 Startups. The company was founded by Joshua Greenough, who, prior to BankOns (think “bank + coupons”), served as VP of Operations at social commerce network PowerReviews. And yes, Mark and Joshua are related – they are father and son. For those unfamiliar, BankOns is something of an anti-Groupon, in that it’s not focused on enticing new users to try a business or service by offering a deeply discounted deal, but is rather rewarding local customers based on their spending history. The company made its debut last spring at the Finovate Conference in San Francisco, where it won “best of show.” (That same conference is starting up in San Francisco again tomorrow.) As Joshua explained last year, “financial institutions are able to connect with their customers on a daily basis whenever the customer checks their smartphone for anything from a bank balance to directions to their favorite restaurant,” he said. “The power of our platform to link transaction data to a customer’s location makes it possible to deliver highly targeted and welcomed offers, creating new and repeated revenue opportunities for financial institutions and savings opportunities for consumers.” Here’s how it worked: After you created an account and entered your bank card login data, Bankons, which was built on top of Yodlee, accessed your transaction history to determine your spending habits and find the nearby deals best suited for you. Bankons utilized your transaction history as well as other local deals like Foursquare, which it could also use to verify your location. And the app allowed you to search for any zip code even if you were not currently in it, and then save the offers you liked. For financial institutions, the service was an interesting value-add, because it could offer a feature set beyond balance inquiry in their mobile apps, which is what banks are actively in search of; meanwhile, for consumers, the app appealed because it would showcase more relevant offers based on their own behavior. Capital One, which purchased Bankons for an undisclosed amount, acquired both the intellectual property and talent from Bankons. Greenough will now serve as Senior Director of Capital One’s Technology Innovation in San Francisco following the acquisition. (Capital One’s Labs are a new group that does rapid prototyping, incubation, and testing of product ideas before they are rolled out to customers.) In a statement, Capital One says: ”the combination of our Lab and the strengths of the Bankons team will add to the talented Digital Innovation Lab team and help accelerate the Labs innovation and rapid prototyping agenda at our innovation labs.” Through Capital One Labs, the former Bankons team now has access to Capital One’s customers – all 45 million of them – a number, Greenough says  that most startups can only dream about.

Facebook Rolls Out ‘Off...

Facebook is famous for dangling the carrot then pulling it away when you try to grab hold. The newest carrot is the ‘Offers’ program, a self-service option for creating Groupon style deals on your Facebook page. Excellent for the small business owner. In March, Facebook announced the program with much fanfare , then noted that it was only available to clients who had managed advertising accounts (the big dogs). So, the rest of us waited patiently. A few hours ago, Facebook added several new posts to their marketing page promoting Offers! Yes, the same program they promoted months ago, but this time it’s open to all — ish. Offers are available in beta to a limited number of local business Pages. We plan to launch offers more broadly soon. If you’d like to post offers but your Page doesn’t have the option to yet, let the Pages team know . Again, with the limited beta. I checked the Pages I managed and nada. Check yours. Go to a post blank and look for a yellow box next to the Events option. If you see the box on your page, go buy a lottery ticket. Skimming the comments on the post, there’s not a one that says “yeah!” They’re all questions or complaints about the missing tab. So I ask, why does Facebook do this? Why promote a program that few people can access? They have to know that it will cause a storm of angry and confused responses. I think Facebook’s Offers program is a great idea. With careful use, it could be an excellent tool for small businesses to help them increase sales and awareness. But if everyone’s annoyed before it even starts, what’s the point? Facebook, you know the rule. You can’t hand out treats to a chosen few. You have enough to share with the whole class.

Facebook’s “Offers” New...

Today any local U.S. business can start using Facebook’s Offers product  – free-to-create coupons that businesses can share to the news feed, and that users can bring to brick-and-mortar stores for redemptions. First announced in February at the Facebook Marketing Conference , the product has been in private testing with a select group of brands who worked with Facebook reps to run the offers. Now the promotional product is available in a self-serve interface. While it doesn’t cost businesses anything to run offers, Facebook could still make money on them. If they perform well in the news feed and drive business to physical stores, those stores may spend more on Facebook ads that increase their Page fan counts — and the subscriber bases for the coupons. To create and distribute an Offer, U.S. businesses that list a local address can go to the post composer on their Page’s Timeline. There they’ll be walked through a tour of the product. Then they can add a thumbnail, headline, and fine print before being able to post the coupon to their fans. Facebook warns that businesses need to train their cashiers or other staff members on how to process offers when customers bring in a printed email or show the confirmation message on their phone. Otherwise they could end up with confused employees and angry patrons. Businesses have spent years building their fan counts, both organically and through paid Facebook ads. However, many have wondered what the actual value of a fan is. With the launch of Offeres, Facebook has given them a clearer answer to how fans drive a return on investment in fans.