group-buying | Internet Marketing Blog

Australian group buying sites. Here to stay or fading fast?

Australians spent $504m on group buying sites in 2012, a rise of 1.4% on the year prior, leading some industry experts to predict that group buying is here to stay.

According to a new Telsyte study, in Q4 2012 Australians spent more than $130m on group buying sites and the combined revenues of the top five deal sites saw a growth of more than 9% year-on-year.

Groupon and Scoopon showed the strongest performances, seeing a combined 40% year-on-year rise.

Travel deals stabilise Australia's group buying market

Group-buying seems to consistently experience conflicting states of flux - from reported positive growth, through to states of decline - so it's arguably difficult to identify the current condition of this segment in the digital industry.

However, according to a new report by Telesyte, Groupon has taken the lead as the most used group buying site, travel has become the most popular deal category for consumers and the group buying market looks like it really is moving away from a decline.

Q&A: Samih Toukan, CEO of Jabbar Internet Group

Samih Toukan is Chairman and CEO at Jabbar Internet Group, the leading group of internet sites and web properties in the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2000, along with Hussam Khoury, Samih founded the Arab Internet services company, Maktoob as the world's first Arabic / English email service provider.

Following the subsequent acquisition of Maktoob by Yahoo, Samih founded Jabbar Internet Group, an integrated group of online companies and websites. The group’s assets extend from e-commerce sites to online games, to advertising products & search services.

I caught up with Samih to find out a little more about the companies within the Jabbar Internet Group, and the future of digital marketing in the Middle East...