Save.com Buys Coupon Sites in $23 Million Deal

Online couponing site Save.com, whose
biggest investor is offline couponing powerhouse Valassis Communications,
Inc., this week agreed to acquire MyCoupons.com and DirectCoupons.com in a deal valued
at $23 million.

The purchase agreement with the previous owner of the coupon sites, DirectStuff.com, includes a two-year
marketing alliance and the management of all of the sites by
DirectStuff.com. This marketing partnership calls for the companies to use
Valassis’ Sunday Free-Standing Inserts to drive traffic to
the MyCoupons.com site. They will also take advantage of advertising
partnerships that MyCoupons has forged with more than 6,000 Web sites.

“MyCoupons will anchor the Save.com network,” said Bruce Ettinger, chief
executive officer of Save.com. “We expect that these marketing efforts will
create exponential growth for MyCoupons and will generate large numbers of
downloads of Save.com couponing software.”

MyCoupons.com provides coupons to consumers and receives more than 15
million monthly page views. DirectCoupons.com is a weekly e-mail
publication with 450,000 subscribers.

“Save.com, with the backing and leadership in couponing of Valassis, seemed
like the perfect fit to acquire these two highly valuable coupon-related
Web properties,” said Jason Wolfe, president and chief executive officer of
DirectStuff.com.