for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
The Groupon Challenge: We all know that local daily deals are all the rage right now (see Groupon and Living Social IPOs); but are they worth all the hype? Noreen Malone put daily deals to the test: she gave herself one week and $200 to live on Groupon deals (aside from a few basics she had stocked up on before). The results are less than spectacular. Noreen ran into the main issues that people often point out about daily deals sites: “nearby” was not always nearby; she ended up purchasing things she didn’t really need or that weren’t actually such a steal; presenting the coupon in restaurants wasn’t the best experience and dining deals sometimes meant limited menu choices. So can you live only on Groupons? No. Can you get good deals on stuff that’s worth it sometimes? Yes. It’s clear that daily deals sites still have room for improvement. Slate
Guess Who’s Back?: Once popular social network Friendster is back; but it’s been rebranded as a social gaming network (just as social gaming giant Zynga readies for an IPO of its own). Hmm, good luck getting back in the social network game. psfk
Facebook Records: The Guinness Book of World Records complied social media feats this year. Here is a list of the Facebook-related ones. Guess who had the record for most likes on a Facebook page? Facebook! AllFacebook
Google is a Belieber: Google has tapped baby-faced Justin Bieber for its new Google Chrome ads.
Chinese Video of the Day: Happy July 4th Weekend! Towleroad
More in Media
Ozone’s platform tries to simulate how publisher content appears in AI answers
Ozone’s new simulation platform aims to crack AI’s black box to let publishers model how their content gets surfaced in AI answer engines.
CNN builds in-house agent infrastructure as it prepares for AI-driven media trading
In Q3, it plans to test one or two properties to see how they’re interpreted by LLMs, before turning in Q4 to buyer behavior and whether budgets are being allocated toward agent-to-agent trading experiments.
How a ‘TikTok doctorate’ made 26-year-old Griffin Johnson a venture capitalist
Griffin Johnson made it big on TikTok back in 2019, now he runs a VC firm and uses his marketing expertise in the Derby world.