A New Breed of Coupon

I did some Sunday reading on the NY Times, which we know is a publication i have a strong affinity for, and i learned something about a certain variety of coupons that we use. The popularity of internet-based coupons grew 268 percent in 2009, we didn't think the marketing guru's were going to let that trend go quietly under the radar did we?

A particular company RevTrax (the only company mentioned) has derived coupons that are able to compile and store information thus creating customer profiles that can be stored. Many of the printable coupons or those sent to mobile phones contain information in their bar codes that often have the ability to denote what search terms were used to find the coupon, internet address, and in some cases even Facebook information. We, the consumers don't have the ability to look and see what information is compiled, they simply appear to be regular coupons to us. For retailers and companies RevTrax offers a bit more information than one of the industry leaders in web marketing, Google. Google provides feedback about what search terms are popular and what gets clicked but does not provide information about who clicks, it appears to have been done in the spirit of protecting consumer information.

RevTrax works a lot with image-rich ads and captures the information every time a customer uses the coupons. If you click an advertisement it may take you to a different page than what you would find if you just searched for it, although the pages may look the same; the difference is primarily behind the scenes.

If you want the full article you can go here. It is important to be aware of the changes taking place around us, this is something that all consumers should be aware of.