WebProNews

Tag: Bing Deals

  • Bing Takes Another Swing At The Deals Space

    Bing announced Bing Offers today. This is a searchable collection of local deals on the web, aggregated from a “broad” set of partners.

    Sound familiar? That’s probably because they launched Bing Deals two years ago, another deals aggregator. Apparently that didn’t work because these days that just redirects to Bing.

    Update: A Microsoft spokesperson tells us:

    “Microsoft has aligned all deal offerings under the Bing Offers brand – with a much wider selection of local and national deals presented across multiple channels.

    In order to better serve our customers, we decided to work on creating a richer experience across devices. As part of the experiential rollout of the new Bing Offers experience, people will begin seeing local deals through Bing and Local Scout on Windows Phone 8. Also, the bing.com/offers site is mobile optimized for customers wanting to discover their deals from any of their favorite mobile devices, such as iPhone or Android.”

    So now Bing is at it again with Bing Offers.

    “Bing Offers brings together popular deals from across the web in one convenient place, creating a simple way for people to discover and take advantage of great local deals,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Whether looking for a new restaurant to try or a much needed spa treatment, consumers can use Bing Offers to search and filter one of the largest collections of local deals from leading providers. Additionally, Bing Offers is optimized for tablets, mobile and PCs, so people can find great deals no matter what device they use.”

    Bing Offers

    The features as described by Bing:

    • All your favorite deals in one place: You no longer need to browse through different websites, manage multiple sign-ups or sift-through your inbox. Bing Offers aggregates popular deals across the US to help you discover great deals at the right time and place.
    • Quickly find the deals you are looking for:Search for your favorite deals by using any business name, category or keyword. Not looking for a specific deal? Then filter out irrelevant offers by location or category including: food, activities, health & fitness, beauty, travel, retail & services.
    • Available on any device: The Bing Offers experience works seamlessly across tablets, mobile devices, and PCs, so you can use access great deals regardless of where you are.

    Bing Offers is US-only at this point.

  • Bing Deals Gets Deals Hub, Punchcard Loyalty Program

    Earlier this year, Bing launched Bing Deals, a deals aggregation feature to surface deals from across the web in Bing. Today, Microsoft announced some new features to go along with that.

    First off is the Deals hub. “Previously deals were surfaced within Local results so you didn’t have one place to go find deals in your area or a way to sort,” a representative tells WebProNews. “With the Bing Deals hub, there is a one stop shop for the more than 200,000 deals from across the web, local daily deals, and exclusive deals only found in Bing.”

    “And those exclusive deals only found in Bing are also new,” he adds. “Deals on mobile via m.bing.com (RIM, iPhone, Android) have had a hub-like page since the launch in March, but with this update the new additions are the exclusive and local deals. Although not identical, Deals on mobile is optimized to surface local deals based on the person’s location – simply clicking on the ‘Locate Me’ button, people can find the best deals in their current location.”

    Also new is a Punchcard loyalty program for advertisers. Raj Kapoor of Microsoft’s mobile advertising team talks about this on the Microsoft Advertising blog:

    Today we are announcing the launch of Bing Deals Beta with loyalty program in 12 cities across the US in order to bring a new relationship-focused element to deals.  Deals will no longer be a one-time engagement, but rather, the Microsoft Punchcard Program will integrate a loyalty program tied to the deal that gets better with more engagement. Businesses will have the opportunity of staying connected with their customers and offer programs that reward their customers for repeat business. Businesses will also have the opportunity to offer “accelerated deals” whereby the deal can become more valuable once the number of customers purchasing the deal crosses a defined threshold.

    Furthermore, Bing Deals will enable giving back to the community by enabling local merchants to offer deals in partnership with local schools with a percentage of the proceeds going towards schools’ fund-raising efforts – continuing a long history of local businesses supporting local community initiatives.

    On top of all of that, there are some updates to the Bing Business Portal, which will let businesses better manage their presence, the company says. These include tools to offer detailed info about your business and other marketing tools.

  • Bing Deals Launched – Find Deals Nearby

    Bing Deals Launched – Find Deals Nearby

    Update: A bit more information about Bing Deals…

    A Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, "Mobile is an increasingly important space, and our mobile search strategy is focused on enabling customers to easily discover, access, and use the information, answers and content they need and want, anytime, anywhere with the convenience of their mobile device. Deals is another example of Bing delivering the things consumers want, right inside their search experience."

    When asked about how deals providers can go about getting included in the mix, the spokesperson told us, "Bing is partnering with The Dealmap to aggregate deals from across the web. We’re working to expand the Bing Deals offering, so we can eventually add new providers and deals in the future."

    The deals will be integrated into regular Bing search results. "When searching for a restaurant or business, if those venues offer deals, you’ll see a deals icon next to your result in the local search experience. There is currently a delay as the system updates, but Deals will begin to show up soon." 

    Original Article: Bing has released Bing Deals for the desktop and Bing Mobile. This is a deals aggregation feature, which provides access to over 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities across the U.S. according to the Bing team. 

    This includes deals from big names like Groupon and LivingSocial and others. The DealMap, which Bing has partnered with on this feature, says it has nearly 300 unique local and daily deal sources going through its DealExchange platform. 

    "Instead of creating our own program, we’ve partnered with The Dealmap, to launch Bing deals," the team says. "Bing’s mission is to help you cut through the clutter of the Web to make decisions more quickly – whether that’s through our own innovations or by teaming up with industry experts. The Dealmap is a leading source for people to find and share the best local deals, so naturally it made sense for us to team up with them to bring you the best experience."

    <br /> <a target="_new" title="Bing Launches Deals" href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&amp;vid=2d427226-041b-40e8-ba91-5c1ae7a8130a&amp;src=SLPl:embed:&amp;fg=sharenoembed">Video: Bing Launches Deals</a>

    A nice feature is that you can look at Deals nearby from the mobile version. While I can get to Bing Deals from m.bing.com (iPhone/Android), I’m not seeing it on the desktop version of the search engine yet. 

    "With one click, you’ll see the top daily deals featuring the very best offers in your metro area," says Bing. "And by top deals we’re talking generally 30%-50% off! These are deals you definitely don’t want to miss so we made a special tab so checking is easy."

    "The DealExchange is the most comprehensive platform for sourcing, distributing and monetizing local deals," said Chandu Thota, co-founder of The Deal Map. "Working with a technology leader like Microsoft bolsters our leadership position and highlights a period of explosive growth for The Dealmap. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Microsoft in ways that will deliver value to consumers and continue to rapidly grow our business."

    We’ve reached out to Bing for additional details about the service, and will update when we hear back. We’d reach out to Groupon to ask whether they think this will help Groupon or help Groupon’s competition, but as CEO Andrew Mason made pretty clear, they won’t answer questions like that. 

    Either way, this could be a huge feature for Bing. Bluntly put, this could be a reason to use Bing Mobile, especially. 

    A new report from BIA/Kelsey says daily deal spending could top $6 billion by $2015.