Marketing used to be simple. You buy a few ads, maybe offer a coupon or two, and people would buy your product (ok, it wasn’t that simple, but it was close). The company that provided the audience–the tv station, newspaper, magazine, or billboard owner–earned most of the marketing spend. That model is changing, and consumers are getting an increasing share of the pie. Groupon really revolutionized the model by convincing tons of business owners to spend their advertising dollars on subsidizing a customer’s (hopefully first) purchase. TrialPay is a Mountain View, CA based company that is using a similar philosophy, but with a very different implementation (Groupon is actually one of their customers). As they put it, they offer “the leading transactional advertising platform that serves thousands of name-brand companies.” They’re kind of like the impulse buy aisle at the supermarket. They already know that you’re going to make one transaction, so they offer you another while your credit card is already out.
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