IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading online local media company, today announced the launch of Spreebird (www.spreebird.com), the company’s new daily deal site. Consumers can now access thousands of daily deals across hundreds of markets nationwide and discover local merchants offering significant discounts for their products and services.
Spreebird collects many of the best deals from across the country and makes them conveniently available in one place. Spreebird then allows consumers to easily browse and buy the deals that are most relevant to their specific interests. Spreebird expects to launch iPhone® and Android™ mobile apps during the third quarter, 2011.
For consumers, Spreebird provides:
- An easy way to find great deals on products and services that match their personal tastes and interests in one place
- A compelling and cost-saving way to discover new local businesses
- The ability to share their favorite deals with friends and family across their social networks
In addition to featuring the best deals from leading deal providers, Spreebird is also sourcing daily deals directly from local merchants, initially from Denver, Philadelphia and Orange County with 17 additional markets expected to roll out by the end of the year. Spreebird enables local merchants and national retailers to present highly discounted offers for local products and services to consumers via daily emails and at the www.spreebird.com website. Spreebird’s directly sourced deals are expected to debut on the site in May.
For local merchants, Spreebird provides:
- A “no money down,” performance-based advertising solution that connects them with targeted local consumers
- A guaranteed, easy-to-measure return on their local online advertising investment
- A powerful new tool to attract, retain and reward customers
“Our goal is to build Local.com into the leading online local media company. Over the past five years, we have built significant assets in this sector, which form the cornerstone of our future growth strategy,” said Heath Clarke, Local.com chairman and CEO. “We’re now heavily focused on expanding our product range. We believe that Spreebird provides us with a significant long-term opportunity to diversify our revenues into the high-growth deal of the day local advertising segment.”
Local.com entered the daily deal space with its recent acquisition of the iTwango deal platform, which has been upgraded and rebranded as Spreebird and forms Local.com’s Social Buying business unit. While the deal space is becoming increasingly crowded, Local.com believes that Spreebird enjoys many competitive advantages over recent entrants into the deal of the day segment, including:
- A strong balance sheet
- Access to the capital required to build and scale a daily deal business across hundreds of markets
- Reach to Local.com’s 20 million consumers each month who are searching for goods and services locally across a network of over 1,000 regional media sites and 100,000 websites hosted by Local.com and OCTANE360 (a Local.com company)
- A broader range of complementary small business ad products and services, which is expected to increase the lifetime value of the local merchant
- Access to real-time product inventory and pricing discounts for over 70,000 products at over 50,000 retailers nationwide via Local.com’s recently acquired Krillion business
“Spreebird’s mission is to provide consumers with the best daily deal discovery service on the Web, while providing local merchants with a highly desirable way to bring new customers directly to their cash register,” said Malcolm Lewis, Local.com senior vice president and general manager, social buying. “We plan to leverage Local.com’s many assets to achieve our goal of establishing Spreebird as a top daily deal site.”
Small business advertisers have shown strong interest and satisfaction with the daily deals and social buying model as an advertising medium as consumers by the masses have been quick to adapt and use daily deals. BIA/Kelsey estimates that daily deal revenues in the United States could exceed $6 billion by 2015.
About Local.com®
Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM) owns and operates a leading local search site and network in the United States. The company uses patented and proprietary technologies to provide over 20 million consumers each month with relevant search results for local businesses, products and services on Local.com and over 1,000 partner sites. Local.com powers over 100,000 local websites, and tens of thousands of small businesses use Local.com products and services to reach consumers using a variety of subscription, performance and display advertising and website products. To advertise, or for more information visit: http://www.local.com/.
Forward Looking Statements
All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this document regarding our anticipated financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of our management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, words such as 'anticipate,' 'believe,' 'estimate,' 'plans,' 'expect,' 'intend,' 'projects,' 'feel' and similar expressions and phrases, as they relate to Local.com or our management, identify forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of our management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to our management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including, but not limited to, Yahoo!-Bing paying less RPC and revenues to us for our search results, our ability to adapt our business following the Yahoo!-Bing integration or to improve our RPCs and revenues following that integration, our ability to monetize the Local.com domain, including at a profit, our ability to retain monetization partners for the Local.com domain and other web properties under our management that allows us to operate profitably, our ability to incorporate our local-search technologies, our ability to market the Local.com domain as a destination for consumers seeking local-search results, our ability to grow our business by enhancing our local-search services, including through businesses we acquire, the future performance of our OCTANE360 business, the integration and future performance of our social buying business, the integration and future performance of our Krillion business, the integration and future performance of the Rovion business once that acquisition is completed, our ability to successfully expand our Spreebird business into new markets, the possibility that the information and estimates used to predict anticipated revenues and expenses associated with the businesses we acquire are not accurate, difficulties executing integration strategies or achieving planned synergies, the possibility that integration costs and go-forward costs associated with the businesses we acquire will be higher than anticipated, our ability to successfully expand our sales channels for new and existing products and services, our ability to increase the number of businesses that purchase our subscription advertising and other business products, our ability to expand our advertiser and distribution networks, our ability to integrate and effectively utilize our acquisitions' technologies, our ability to develop our products and sales, marketing, finance and administrative functions and successfully integrate our expanded infrastructure, as well as our dependence on major advertisers, competitive factors and pricing pressures, changes in legal and regulatory requirements, and general economic conditions. Any forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this paragraph. Unless otherwise stated, all site traffic and usage statistics are from third-party service providers engaged by the company.
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K/A, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and recent Current Reports on Form 8-K and Form 8-K/A, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
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