New Publishing Tech
3 mins read

Q&A: Global Savings Group, helping publishers generate revenue through commerce content

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Global Savings Group is a privately held PubTech platform based in Munich, Germany. The company works with publishers such as Spiegel, Business Insider, CNN, El Pais, and Daily Mail to offer specialized reader discounts and promo codes, in effect replacing the time-worn print coupons and classified offers used in newspapers. WNIP caught up with Johannes Wirth, CRO at Global Savings Group, to find out more…

Can you give us further background about your company?

The company was founded in 2012 by Andreas Fruth, Adrian Renner and Gerhard Trautmann, and we have offices in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Kuala Lumpur, London, Madrid and Warsaw. The company was originally called CupoNation Group, but was rebranded in 2016 as Global Savings Group. GSG currently has over 400 employees across the globe.

In addition to working with some of the largest publishers in each of its global markets, GSG works with thousands of online retailers across the globe, including Nike, Amazon and Walmart.

What business problem is your company addressing?

At the height of print publishing, a larger portion of revenue was generated from coupons, classifieds and additional forms of advertising.  As the publishing industry transitioned to digital and readers gravitated to social networks like Craigslist and Facebook for classified listings, publishers increasingly came to rely on ad tech solutions and programmatic models to drive revenues. After a time, as Google, Facebook and Amazon retained more control of global ad revenue, publishers were pushed to identify and employ additional revenue streams to ensure profitability. 

One such revenue stream is the age-old coupon relationship between advertisers and publishers. Offering deals for consumers continues to attract readers to publishers’ websites – that’s where we come in. At GSG, we work with publishers and advertisers to reimagine this essential relationship for the digital age. Our partnerships with publishers, advertisers and affiliate networks, along with our collaborative approach to content, streamlines coupon marketing for the digital age.

What is your core product addressing this problem?

We look at the partnerships that we have with publishers, advertisers and affiliate networks as our core product. These relationships enable us to provide access to premium audiences in a safer brand environment. Publishers’ readers also benefit from this relationship in the form of access to personalized campaigns and targeted deals.

For an example of how our partnerships look and the types of content we produce, coupons.businessinsider.com or discountcode.dailymail.co.uk are good examples.

Can you give some examples of publishers successfully using your solution?

We work with some of the leading publishers across a number of global markets. In Germany, we work with Hubert Burda Media and Spiegel, among others. In the U.S. and the UK markets, we work with the likes of CNN, Business Insider and the Daily Mail, to name a few. Some of our international publishers in other markets include El Pais and L’Express.

Pricing?

With the aim to work collaboratively with our partners, our pricing model depends on the specific partnership. Rather than charging a campaign fee, we incentivize partners by offering revenue share deals that help them deliver more appealing deals to consumers and maximize their return on investment.

What are other people doing in the space and why?

When compared to our competitors, we have made significant investments in both the tech and content sides of our business. As such, we are able to provide the dynamic solutions, gift-cards and in-store coupons that our competitors cannot. Additionally, we are able to leverage the relationships we have with brands and affiliate networks to provide unique deals and personalized offers.

How do you view the future?

Worldwide, we are seeing that more publishers are entering and investing into the commerce content space – many consider this as one of the most strategic growth drivers for their company. Recently, however, we have seen that Google has introduced changes to its search algorithms that could have serious consequences for publisher revenue streams when it comes to commerce content. That being said, we are continually working with our partners on both the publisher and advertiser side to ensure that the brand equity they built up over the years is not disregarded and they can continue to create and deliver quality content and offerings for their consumers.

Anything else we should know about?

We are expecting to facilitate around 27.5M transactions for our partners this year, generating around $2.07B in gross merchandise value (GMV). In 2019, we expect to generate up to 20 percent of our publishing partners’ digital revenues.

Thank you.