Retailers are spending millions of dollars on weekly circulars and its distribution along with Newspapers through mail. Taking this spend online can help Retailers save substantial dollars as well as increase usage/reach using social media features. MSN does exactly that and comes to their rescue with their new Local Deals site. MSN unveiled a new localized deals site through an interactive online circulars experience as part of MSN Local Edition – http://deals.msn.com.  So far Kohl’s, Target, Staples and RadioShack have signed up on the site. The circular page features Silverlight and DeepZoom technology, which will provide an immersive consumer experience. The users will be able to:

• Rotate through various circulars all on one screen
• Browse and ‘flip’ through pages just like with traditional circulars
• Search for products across all the circulars at once
• Zoom in on products within a circular at a high resolution
• Hover over to learn more about a specific product, including reviews on Bing shopping
• Add items to a shopping list
• Find retailer locations using Bing Maps
• Share finds with others through social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live
• Link to a retailer’s site to purchase a product online

The circulars will refresh as often as retailers update information in ShopLocal (who is providing the back-end data for our circular experience) – usually weekly. Circulars that are not current will not be visible, ensuring that consumers are always browsing fresh content. Additionally, since the destination site is geo-targeted, only relevant circulars for a consumer’s location will be shown.