Ethical competition and artificial intelligence: a player is emerging in the European discount coupon market ready to reach out to small businesses, instead of simply claiming to be the most profitable discount provider.

Everyone knows coupons. You might find them in your mailbox, you can get one at the checkout in a bookstore to spend in the nearest cafe, or redeem them on a marketplace during a sale. There are even websites that collect the best available deals from all over the web.

For businesses, it is a familiar and effective advertising tool. Offer a discount, and new customers will appear, existing ones will come back, you will boost the average transaction value, and enjoy a healthy ROI. Enjoy and repeat, but don’t get carried away.

In 2025, the global coupon market is booming. Today, it is estimated at $8.96 billion, and experts forecast its growth to $40.8 billion by 2033. Thus, there are platforms that offer companies to issue coupons and consumers to purchase them.

In Germany, a new player, #LiberSave, is entering this already crowded market. If you visit their website now, you will see fairly standard promises of profitable deals and internal cashback on purchases with coupons.

Perhaps the real difference that might catch your eye is the text that says: “Universal platform: issue coupons if you are a seller and buy coupons if you are a buyer.” Usually, websites like this hide the business section somewhere in the corner, so as not to distract customers from the splashy offers for waterparks, cafés, or footwear outlets. But for the creators of #LiberSave, this detail, placed on the main page, seems to be fundamentally important.

Explaining the platform’s mission, its founder, Lev Aronovich, speaks not only of consumer benefits like ‘financial hygiene’ and ‘responsible consumption’, although coupons naturally fit into both categories. He speaks with the fervor of an activist more than a conventional entrepreneur, emphasizing “horizontal connections” and his desire to “give a fishing rod” to small and medium businesses struggling in a market increasingly dominated by large corporations.

With the passion of a political activist rather than a businessman, he emphasizes horizontal connections and how he wants to “give a fishing rod” to small and medium-sized businesses, forced to survive in an environment where large corporations are increasingly controlling every part of our lives.

When Aronovich describes his company’s vision as a form of “capitalist communism,” one can’t help but wonder. #LiberSave, he says, aims to humanize business competition and provide smaller companies with access to instruments that will help reduce soaring ad costs.

Coupons themselves have long proven value for businesses. Promotions can bring in new patrons — few can resist a well-timed discount — and re-engage past customers. They help regulate demand, whether during seasonal lulls or slower hours, and accelerate traffic in general. Shoppers tend to spend more when they believe they’re getting a deal, and coupon campaigns often increase the average purchase size.

Their effectiveness is quite straightforward to measure. While targeted ad clicks can be counted, marketers know these figures don’t always translate into real-world returns, and they must be paid for regardless of the outcome. By contrast, coupons offer clear, trackable metrics: RPR, ROI, and other indicators of ad success.

According to Aronovich, #LiberSave will allow entrepreneurs to treat coupons almost like a form of currency, deciding independently how much to invest in promotions without conforming to the high-stakes, high-cost standards of today’s advertising landscape, where a single campaign can jeopardize a company’s profits for years.

Coupon promotions run into two problems. Firstly, an enthusiastic entrepreneur might start offering constant discounts, training customers to expect deals, but too many coupons can simply destroy profits. Secondly, to purchase and use coupons, people need to discover them in the first place. That’s why it’s necessary to make sure that such offers are visible. And here we must return to traditional digital marketing with its seeding and targeting. But #LiberSave wants to solve this problem as well, so now it starts working on its own media projects.

These plans include the creation of a network of regional platforms where local news will be published and local businesses will receive targeted promotion. Notably, #LiberSave approaches this task not like a young media outlet but as a tech company, with AI at the core of the project. Major media organizations are increasingly experimenting with the same idea, and it appears that neural networks are set to become an integral part of the industry in the near future.

The company actively uses this technology, seeing the future of the “fourth industrial revolution” in AI. AI will inevitably become an important element of the loyalty market in general and the discount coupon industry in particular. Algorithms that analyze customer behavior and offer personalized offers are already a reality, but every day they are making fewer mistakes and becoming more accurate.

The modern world dictates new conditions of consumption. Advertising tactics constantly evolve, new tools emerge, and those with more resources and tools gain an advantage. Surely, #LiberSave won’t turn this game around — but perhaps, thanks to platforms like it, the café on the corner won’t be replaced by a Starbucks quite so soon.

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