Posted on 10/08/2011 7:13:31 AM PDT by rawhide
Groupon Inc. said Friday it plans to “significantly” cut its online marketing spending, an apparent reversal of its chief executive’s earlier boast that the discount-deal site spends an enormous amount on that effort “because it works.”
Chicago-based Groupon made the disclosure in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its much-anticipated, but controversial, initial public offering.
Groupon said that while it spent $345.1 million on online marketing in the first half of 2011, “the resources presently being devoted to online marketing initiatives are not yielding sufficiently attractive investment returns.”
It said it would “significantly” decrease spending in that area.
This appeared to be a dramatic reversal of an Aug. 25 email in which CEO Andrew Mason wrote the following: “We are currently spending more than just about any company ever on marketing. ... Why do we spend so much? The simple answer is ‘because it works.’ ”
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Isn't that like saying the post office plans to significantly cut moving mail?
Their "model", apparently, is to do whatever everyone else does, sell personal data and clicks.
And on this, plus porn, hand the hopes of the Information Economy.
Vapor-city alert.
It's fitting we have a narcissist-in-chief, because the entire concept is narcissistic - it produces nothing except the machinery to flatter and stimulate ourselves.
hand >> hang
Should have taken googles offer and got out. This model is being copied everywhere now.
My guess is 5 years from now, this company probably won’t even exist. They are looking to inflate the value and find some bagholders so the investors can cash out.
“rue the day they refused Google tremendous buyout offer! “
So they invest in online marketing because it works, make a pile of cash, Google (do no evil) offers to buy them.
Groupon says No! We don’t need you!
And now, mysteriously, online marketing does NOT work for them!
Couldn’t be Google’s doing- their motto is after all Do No Evil.
Didn't work for Solyndra either.
Sadly, WE were the bagholders in that case....
As a fellow Solyndra "bagholder", I think it did, actually. The plan was never about solar.
As for the owner of Groupon, he missed his window. It's a brilliant model of operation, but there are no secrets to it, so it can be easily reproduced. The giants of the Internet will swallow him up now.
I guess they could just sing...
The Staff of Groupon Sings a J.S. Bach Christmas Chorale at the Chicago Lyric Opera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdgbmLx1sg
Yea...the (our) $500+ billion is gone, for sure. But there was a second set of investors that put in something like $750 million(?)...with their intention to complete the IPO, and then cash out. That was the deal that the US govt agreed to subordinate the original loan to the new investor's loan. Didn't that $750 million go away too?
Just thought I read that somewhere (probably FRep).
I don’t understand the attraction for this site. I’ve never found anything I wanted, when I signed up I was barraged with spam, and I have heard nothing but complaints from those that have tried to take advantage of one of their offers.
i’ve only bought one offer but it worked just fine
I was really hoping they would go public, so I could short the crap out of it. Horrible business model.
I hope they go away, so I don’t get any more offers of 50% off on sunbathing in Siberia.
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