Amazon Ready for Daily Deals Fight

By Robert Davis
Dec 5 2010

Amazon announced yesterday that they will be working closely with LivingSocial to expand their business in all US cities in the coming year.

Amazon is a surprise entrant into the local advertising world. The largest online retailer has often stuck close to its core business but step well out-of-bounds with the investment in LivingSocial. Now they have some big plans and they are hoping that they will be able to make LivingSocial a household name.

The trick, according to Amazon reps, is getting more local businesses involved with the website. They believe that it is a win/win situation for all parties. The businesses increase their business and customer counts and LivingSocial makes more money. For that the company needs more money to hire people to approach those local businesses. That is where the investment from Amazon comes in.

LivingSocial will add hundreds more employees over the next year. Their job will be simple. They will need to find and sign more businesses to the LivingSocial network. Once this happens then LivingSocial will be able to provide more deals to more customers which will increase their advertising rates.

Amazon is viewing this new investment as a tremendous boost to their bottom line. Many have said that local advertising is the future of the internet and it appears as though they were correct. Even Facebook has been looking into ways to bring targeted local ads to their 500 million users on the popular social network.