Canada is crazy for Daily Deals!
Canada is known for having a large percentage of its population using reward programs, rewards cards, etc.
So it is no surprise that Daily Deals are also popular in this country.
But the following factoids are rather telling:
1. Canada is exploding with Daily Deal fever: There are over 100 Daily Deal sites in Canada
2. There are over 50 Aggregators in Canada (yes, 50, that is insane)
3. The population of Canada is 34 million. The population of the USA is 310 Million and they have about 550 daily deal sites.
4. The numbers above mean that there are more Daily Deal sites and Daily Deal aggregators in Canada than in the USA on a per capita basis.
5. Groupon does NOT dominate Daily Deal sales in Canada. Nor is Living Social. Sure, they have their moments of impressive numbers, and certainly lead the country in sales on occasion, but there is more competition for them here than in the USA. In any given city or province there are different leading sites. Dealfind leads, Wagjag leads, Yellow pages leads and Tuango leads in Montreal. In fact, Groupon isn’t even in the top 3 in the city of Montreal. A position they are not used to in North America.
6. DealFind is from Canada and one of the top Daily Deal sites in North America. They are our Canadian success story and they should be celebrated. They also boast being the only Daily Deal site from Canada that has expanded into the US.
7. The city of Toronto produces the most Daily Deal sites and aggregators. Over 50% of all sites in Canada have been launched from Toronto.
8. Media companies and Publishers are just getting started in launching their services. A bit slower than their counter parts in the US. See post on publishers for more info.
9. Niche sites are not as popular in Canada…yet. In the US, there are niche sites for various markets (pets, golf, sports, kids, food, etc) In Canada, food is the most popular niche site. There are 5 daily deal sites just focused on Restaurants.
10. We anticipate a doubling of daily deal sites over the next 12 months before growth starts to slow. Thus, we estimate around 200 sites in Canada alone by the end of the year. This is mostly due to the fact that it is far easier to launch a site today than it was just 6 months ago. There are now Daily Deal platforms, WordPress themes, scripts, etc that enable an entrepreneur to launch with more ease and speed.
11. We’ll throw in an extra point: Consolidation in Canada? Sure, but not yet. Larger sites from the USA may want to buy a Canadian version for easier entry, large publishers may want to buyout popular niche sites in order to round out their offering, smaller sites may merge with other small sites in order to compete more effectively and once Google Offers and/or Facebook Deals expand throughout Canada and reduce their take of a deal from the standard 45-50% to 20%, well, then you can start counting sites that will disappear rather quickly.
But not yet. Canada is still going crazy for Daily Deals.
