The Challenge

In addition to the challenges of front-end design and development, nascent product comparison applications must also overcome a constant need for relevant promotional data. Establishing a proprietary repository of promotional data is no small task: requiring expertise in large-scale data acquisition, processing, and storage.

Instead, companies seeking to avoid the complications inherent in reliable data acquisition may choose to source information from a dedicated data provider. A data provider, such as Discount Metrics, allows application developers to focus on their core application by eliminating the problems associated with constant data collection. When evaluating a data provider, the following are important considerations:

• Is data acquisition a core skill of your company?
• What are the benefits of outsourcing data collection to a dedicated source?
• How extensive are your data needs, and can these coverage requirements be met by a data provider?
• How frequently is your data updated, and can your data provider deliver on such requirements?
• What format and consistency are useful for your application?
• Is your data provider capable of processing and adding customized attributes?

Promotional Data Feeds Using Discount Metrics

Discount Metrics offers the following services and technologies to help you deliver innovative applications:

• Real-Time Promotions - Designed to facilitate immediate and reliable implementation of real-time promotional data into various business intelligence and consumer search applications. Promotional data is collected at the store level, within hours of publication, and includes all relevant item and pricing information for the products on sale each week. This data is further normalized into persistent category, retailer, and brand entities, through a proprietary system developed by Discount Metrics.
• Historical Promotion Archive - Accessed via a web interface, subscribers are given access to our comprehensive archive of historical promotions and images. This interface is powered by our real-time promotional data feeds; archived promotions are normalized into persistent category, retailer, and brand entities to facilitate easy comparison and integration with external data sources.
• Circular Image Search - Search and compare page and product images of both current and historical circulars. This search is especially useful for those subscribers who need to compare art assets, page layouts, or even entire circulars for a specific retailer or product.
• Custom Categorization Engine - Discount Metrics’ categorization engine provides a rule-based web interface to facilitate quick and easy augmentation of all promotional information. Meta-data, custom categories, or other attributes can quickly and easily be added with our categorization engine.
• Promotion & UPC Matching - By classifying promotions into multiple, highly-specific categories, Discount Metrics is able to map promotional data and Universal Product Codes in near real-time. Through UPC mapping, your promotional data can now be integrated with other sources of information to achieve a new level of insight and measurability.

Key Benefits

• Coverage - By leveraging Discount Metrics’ various data feeds, you have immediate access to the promotional data of over 140 retailers across the United States and Canada. Data points are clear, precise, and available within hours of publication.
• Ease of Use - All our data feeds are available in standard formats (CSV, JSON) to ensure maximum compatibility with your applications. Not sure which format to use? We work extensively with you to understand the precise data format needs of your business requirements.
• Reliability - Our databases and feeds are continually updated from a variety of sources..
• Economies of Scale - Eliminate expensive in-house development and maintenance costs by utilizing our suite of promotional and coupon data products. We collect and refine the raw data, so you don’t have to.
• Completely Customizable - Don’t see the specific data you need? Unsure of how to integrate our products with your applications? We customize data feeds to meet individual business and applications needs. Extensive support and customization is standard on all our data products, with no hidden fees or service charges.