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A comment on Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits.

Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by InclinedPlane on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:33PM (#3031998)
Can someone explain to me why Groupon's margins are so thin/negative? Don't they basically take half of the revenue that comes in as part of a groupon? Shouldn't their overhead be little more than the site, plus sales staff, plus devs? Where does their money go?
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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by georgemcbay on Friday September 23, 2011 @08:03PM (#3032072)
"Where does their money go?"

Multiple Superbowl commercials starring famous people don't come cheap, I would imagine.. and that is one of the ways Groupon has been trying to "party like it's 1999", so to speak.

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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by ceejayoz on Friday September 23, 2011 @09:42PM (#3032228)
Not to mention what seemed to be 1/3 of Google's entire advertising inventory. For a while I couldn't go to most sites without seeing a Groupon ad.
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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by joebadmo on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:35PM (#3032002)
I would imagine it's the employees part. A lot of the speculation about Google's motivation to buy Groupon was about the sales staff, which has to be pretty extensive to cover all the businesses in all the cities Groupon operates in.
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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by portman on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:51PM (#3032039)
No, in 2010 they spent $263M on customer acquisition, and only $233M on everything else (rent, servers, employees, bonuses). [1]

[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490281/0001047469110...

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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by brandong on Saturday September 24, 2011 @09:01AM (#3033127)
IIRC, in Groupon definition, customer acquisition is money spent on the sales teams.
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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by InclinedPlane on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:44PM (#3032025)
If it's as simple and as basic as a bloated sales force that can't pull its own weight, then that definitely casts a harsh light on their viability in general.
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Re:Groupon Restates Revenue, Revenue Fell In Half, COO Exits by shadow_s on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:36PM (#3032007)
Advertising takes up a lot of it.
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