Quebecor partners with e-commerce hub

Quebecor Media Inc. is giving Tuango Inc. access to its audience base in return for the ecommerce company’s email list in a barter deal to lure advertisers in a struggling media environment.

The Montreal-based broadcaster and newspaper publisher — which owns properties including television networks at TVA Group and tabloid newspapers Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec — announced Wednesday it is partnering with Tuango to allow its advertisers to sell their wares through the group-buying site.

Founded in 2010, Tuango clusters together users who want to buy the same product in order to negotiate deals with retailers and manufacturers by offering them bulk sales — usually with a contingency that a minimum number of people sign up.

The firm’s name comes from a shopping practice in China in which a group of consumers arrange to show up at a store at the same time and request a bulk-sale deal. The site has become popular in Quebec competing against international bulk sales sites like Groupon, TeamBuy and LivingSocial.

Tuango’s arrangement with Quebecor Media, however, will not see any cash change hands, with both banking that their ad-sales combination will be an appealing proposition to businesses.

Quebecor Media is hoping that the prospect of bulk sales to Tuango’s 1.3 million email subscribers will attract advertisers. Tuango gets access to consumers of Quebecor Media’s properties, which the company says almost reaches the province’s entire population each week.

“We share the same values, so this alliance was a natural,” Quebecor Media vice-president Donald Lizotte said. “It is based on an innovative new business model that will enable us to offer our existing customers new local and national opportunities, and also to bring in new customers who couldn’t previously afford a media campaign with us. It’s a win-win.”

In its most recent quarterly results in November, Quebecor Media’s parent, Quebecor Inc., reported a $23.8-million growth in revenues, but that was almost entirely the result of 5.2-per-cent growth at telecom unit Vidéotron.

The media segment’s revenues decreased to $34.5 million, down from $42.9 million a year earlier and from $38.7 million in the previous quarter. Quebecor announced at the same time that it would be cutting 220 jobs, or eight per cent of its workforce, at the media division. Quebecor owns an 81.1-per-cent stake in Quebecor Media, while the provincial pension fund Caisse de dépôt owns 18.9 per cent.

“The industry has been disrupted in Quebec as in the rest of the world, and we have therefore made a number of transformational moves,“said Julie Tremblay, CEO of Quebecor Media.