Savings.com has been acquired by the Cox Media Group. Savings.com, one of the most popular “groupon” or “coupon” sites, offers the best deals on practically anything you want in every big city in the world. It has more than a hundred thousand national and online retailers giving out freebies and coupons via the site.
We learned that Evercore acted as the exclusive advisor to Savings.com in its sale to Cox Media Group. Michael Vivio, president of Cox Target Media confirmed yesterday the acquisition, adding “This acquisition brings together national and local savings content, community expertise and multi-channel marketing capabilities to provide the best of all worlds for marketers and consumers. We also believe Savings.com has tremendous growth opportunity through its international expansion of Savoo.co.uk, and we are committed to supporting that effort.”
Cox Media is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion in revenue. The company operations include 15 broadcast television stations and one local cable channel, 86 radio stations, eight daily newspapers and more than a dozen non-daily publications, and more than 100 digital services. CMG operates in more than 30 media markets and reaches approximately 52 million Americans weekly plus 18 million radio listeners. Vivio added, “Cox Target Media and Savings.com were both looking for ways to expand value to businesses and consumers, and realized that when combined, our resources and offerings in print, online and mobile would be powerful and unlike anything else available to marketers.”
Savings.com sister company, Savoo.co.uk, was also acquired by Cox as part of deal. Cox Media announced that they intend to improve their presence in the UK and other parts of the world “both in the online and offline media”. This may mean more television infomercials and more coupons for major cities around the world.
On the Savings.com site, there seem to be no major changes however. Perhaps, if it’s not broken, then don’t fix it –the site does have about 6 million visitors a month. In fact, Loren Bendele, founder and CEO of Savings.com, will be continuing on in his current role at Savings.com.
“Since it launched in 2007, Savings.com has saved consumers more than $600 million. Savings.com DealPros are an influential network of social media experts and bloggers who share money saving advice to help consumers extend their savings lifestyle. The DealPros collectively reach 10 million highly engaged readers a month, “ according to the Savings.com press team. People who want to save are really quite engaged with Savings.com – because the site offers REAL coupons and discounts, even for large retailers like Sony, Sears, Drugstore and Radio Shack plus hundreds more.
The blog community is as active as ever and no one seems to be talking much about the Cox Media acquisition; in fact, freebies are still the hot topic. After all, there’s no such thing as small change:
