Infographic: The Rise of Online Deal Seeking and Couponing

Who knew that a simple Coca-Cola

promotion would grow into a market that could save consumers billions of dollars each year?

In 1888, the leading cola manufacturer is credited with creating the world's first coupon. Consumers who redeemed the coupon would get one free glass bottle of Coke. This promotional tool proved to be so effective that other companies followed suit with their own coupons. The freebies, however, did not last forever. C.W. Post – the cereal maker that evolved into Post and became a subsidiary of Ralcorp Holdings

– used a one-cent coupon to market Grape Nuts in 1909. By 1940, grocery stores were using coupons to attract customers from local markets. Twenty-five years later, half of all families in the United States were hooked on this money-saving solution. Once the ‘90s arrived and the Internet began to usher in a new era of content distribution, consumers started getting their coupons online. Online and printable coupons have become so popular that the U.S. government used them to promote converter box sales for the digital TV transition. As of 2010, coupon transactions in the United States amounted to $3.7 billion. All of this information comes from CreditScore.net, which produced an impressive infographic (see below) using data acquired from a wide variety of sources, including

,

,

, and

, to name a few. The infographic goes on to explain that digital coupons have been outpacing printed coupons 10 to 1. In 2010 alone, more than 332 billion coupons were distributed along with 63,000 daily deals offered in the U.S. With an estimated 200 daily deal sites, 40,000 daily deals have reportedly come to American consumers in the first quarter alone. Interestingly, newspaper inserts are still supposedly the primary method of coupon distribution, taking 89% of the market. However, that hasn't stopped the Internet from taking a piece of the pie. In 2009, Internet redemption growth rose 263%. Take a look at the infographic for more: