Brian Costello, GM and VP, Digital Media and The RedPlum Network, Valassis Communications; Jere Doyle, founder, president and CEO, Prospectiv; and James Green, chief marketing officer, Travidia took on the topic of “Deal Universe: The Big Picture for Coupons and Sales” at ILM East.

Some common themes were the need to create a context around local content as that creates relevance around consumers shopping for local deals. Costello shared that national and regional advertisers are very concerned about targeting has to be a local message.

Green said an opportunity exists to reach broad demographic groups, but it is important to make the use of deal services by clients as easy as possible to scale the business. Doyle observed that “deal a day is a retail business, not an advertising business; [there are] incredible amount of retail issues associated with it.”

Doyle argued that coupons are more “in” now. This may be so, but Costello asserted that deal a day will have to do more targeting to increase it market presence.