The looming coupon crisis

Coupons could be the next cri­sis for the news indus­try, says Jeff Jarvis:

The prob­lem with dig­i­tal coupons and cir­cu­lars has been porta­bil­ity: the extra and incon­ve­nient step of print­ing out supresses use. But now enter the smart phone and the long-fabled day of the smart, mobile coupon may actu­ally arrive. If I can check into a flight with a scan of my iPhone shouldn’t I be able to buy toi­let paper with it?

He’s say­ing that adver­tis­ers have been rely­ing on news­pa­pers to dis­trib­ute their coupons for years, but the Web pro­vides a way to cut out the mid­dle man and save money. It won’t be long, Jarvis writes, before the ad indus­try fig­ures this out en masse and takes another source of rev­enue away from newspapers.

The log­i­cal thing for news­pa­pers and news orga­ni­za­tions to do is fig­ure out how to do this before some enter­pris­ing startup does it first.

Related posts:

1. What Twitter did for cri­sis jour­nal­ism today
2. Don’t stop the presses just yet