-we have a Groupon 'clone' program that is moderately successful. -we approached Groupon in 2009 and proposed a partnership to tackle the local market. Various issues came up and we could not reach an agreement that would take us beyond standard affiliate. Groupon is okay and is getting a ton of exposure, but I am interested in their ability to support local advertisers. I here good things from buyers, but not always from merchants...
-Newspapers, from my brief experience here, generally face 2 issues with partners like seeing interactive: 1) Historical tendency to pay too much for hosted solutions that actually take customers away. 2) Print mentality that change is very slow, but often dramatic (new front page or sports section) instead of rapidly iterating in increments at a target experience.
Biased as it may sound, Seeing Interactive eliminated both of these concerns as they continue to iterate and improve the product and help the Press Enterprise keep customers.