Hmm… Denver ranks No. 1 for tweeting about coupons, says Sumo Coupon. Click image to enlarge.
Coupons.com’s 10 Most Frugal Cities
Coupons. Denverites appear to love them. Denver ranked No. 9 in Coupons.com’s “” list this year. The rank was determined by how much the entire city saved by using Coupons.com. More details on the chart to the right.
But of course, coupon usage — and data — is relative. According to another coupon site, , Denver is the most coupon-crazed city, at least on Twitter. In its chart, , Sumo says that Denver had 40.2 Tweets about coupons per 100,000 residents. San Francisco, which was at the top of Coupons.com’s list, doesn’t even land in Sumo’s Top 20. Go figure.
Now coupons are great for saving money. But that’s if you take the trouble to find them, cut them out and actually use them. For those of us who treat coupons as an afterthought, Denver-based rolled out a new feature today that just may work better for you.
Ibotta is . The company lets users earn discounts on specific products by watching a video, learning a fact or taking a poll. After making the purchase, customers must scan receipts into the . Ibotta pays the money to user Paypal or Venmo accounts.
On Monday, Ibotta took the non-coupon approach one step further. With its new Any Brand program, Ibotta offers discounts on about 20 staples regardless of brand. Current staples include milk, cereal, eggs and bananas. You still have to go through the tedium of earning the discounts, shopping and then scanning receipts. But this could prove more attractive than learning that typical fresh juice has 255 calories of sugar per bottle, compared to Sambazon’s 100 calories — and then get $0.50 off if you buy a 1 liter bottle of Sambazon.
If you buy designer organic milk or the cheapo store brand, Denver-based Ibotta now lets users save money on milk regardless of brand.
Ibotta, which attracted a last year, said it tested the program with milk for about a year after realizing that “over 70 percent of its users regularly bought milk,” said the company.
But how does it make money? According to a , Ibotta splits revenues with retailers, which include King Soopers, Target and CVS. In addition, retailers get valuable insight into a shopper’s habits and find out who’s willing to spend 27 seconds to watch a video in exchange for a 25-cent discount on a bottle of Perrier.
While swapping personal information for discounts isn’t for everybody, Ibotta counts 2 million users as active, compared to 6.3 million people who downloaded the app, according to AdWeek. That’s pretty sticky. For those habits, Ibotta has paid users $20 million in cash rebates since 2012.
